Centerless plunge grinding machine with progressive angle development

Abstract

A centerless grinder is adapted to have a regulating wheel feed radially towards a grinding wheel about a pivot point to accomplish an infeed grind operation on a plurality of parts between the wheels. The parts are infeed ground at a plurality of stations from an inlet end of the wheels to an outlet end of the wheels, when the pivot point is proximate the outlet end, thereby achieving variable feed distances and variable feed rates along the face of the regulating wheel relative to the grinding wheel, from the inlet end to the outlet end. After such an infeed grind operation, the plurality of parts are advanced to their next adjacent stations for a subsequent grind operation. By the arrangement disclosed, coarse-feed grinding is performed on one workpiece while fine-feed grinding is performed on another piece and varying degrees of rates of grinding are performed on the intermediate pieces during the same time interval. By predetermined angling of the wheel faces at each station, the final workpiece cone becomes the initial workpiece cone at the next adjacent station, thus causing the grind to start along the entire length of the part, tending to lessen wheel wear and improve grinding efficiency.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.