Apparatus and method for grinding of materials such as metal comprising a handling system adapted to automatically exchange and dress tools

An industrial finishing machine tool offering improved accessibility

• during the manufacturing sequence, the finishing machine tool having at least:
• (a) a machine bed;
• (b) a rotatable indexer defining an indexing axis and mounted to the machine bed;
• (c) a workpiece holder mounted to the rotatable indexer;
• (d) at least two Quality Control (QC) and/or tooling setups mounted to the rotatable indexer on a right or left side of a null position around an axis of the workpiece holder such that the QC and/or tooling setups rotate with the workpiece holder around the indexing axis in a fixed relationship to each other or other dressing arrangements and to the axis of the workpiece holder, the QC and/or tooling setups being located at different mounting positions with an angle difference of more than 15 degrees and less than 60 degrees around the center of rotation of the indexing axis and not located at the null position;
• and
• (e) a finishing tool mounted to the machine bed so as to finish a workpiece when the workpiece is mounted in the workpiece holder,
• wherein, in this configuration, the finishing machine tool offers kinematics free of collision
• risk when processing the finishing tool, preferably dressing the finishing tool, or changing
• out the workpiece.