Steady rest for supporting central workpiece regions during the machining of central and/or eccentric workpiece regions, in particular bearing points on crankshafts, and grinding machine having such a steady rest

Grinding machine for grinding central and/or eccentric workpiece regions on workpieces comprising:

• a steady rest for supporting the central workpiece regions, which steady rest can be advanced to the workpiece region from a retracted to a supporting position for grinding the workpiece and has at least two supporting parts that can be forwarded to a workpiece region, which supports the workpiece region at respective circumferential regions that are separated from each other, with the workpiece along with its workpiece region being supported in the supporting position, and
• a control device by means of which the steady rest can be forwarded to the central workpiece region during or after the grinding of a workpiece region by means of a grinding wheel and the grinding wheel can be forwarded up to the final dimension of the bearing point,
• characterized in that the supporting parts of the steady rest forming an opening angle with respect to each other at each lateral flank of a body forming a fork and having two shanks are disposed in the grinding machine in a fixed position with respect to each other on a steady rest arm and in the supporting position sub-central to a longitudinal axis of the workpiece region, that a bisector comprising a bisector line and formed between the supporting parts has a fixed acute angle with respect to the perpendicular to the longitudinal axis of the workpiece region and that the steady rest has formed a CNC feed axis by means of which it can be forwarded coincident with the bisector line to the workpiece region in a CNC-controlled manner.