On the Haas Schleifmaschinen stand at the EMO Milano exhibition in October, the grinder manufacturer used its Multigrind machine to demonstrate the single-point grinding of a skiving tool to such close tolerances that it could produce gears to quality 2 to 3 (the accuracy class when skiving gears is traditionally 4 to 6). The sole sales and service agent for Haas Schleifmaschinen in the UK, Irish and Gulf markets is Kingsbury.

Wolfram Hermle, software department manager at Haas Schleifmaschinen says: “Today, dimensional tolerances of 2 µm are not uncommon. The production of such accurate profiles requires highly complex calculations. If we want to have that under control, we have to do the maths ourselves.”

Two years ago, when the project to develop the required software was initiated, there was no satisfactory method on the market for determining machining cycles to achieve the ever increasing gear precision being demanded by industry. The goal was to create a system that could calculate cycles for cutting a wide variety of gears.

Hermle does not want to divulge details of the newly developed calculation model in Haas Schleifmaschinen’s Multigrind Horizon software, but confirms that machining gears of accuracy class 2 to 3 is possible. However, he points out that it is only one element of the process, the other being the high precision which the grinding machine must be capable of achieving: alignment of the grinding wheel must be accurate to 0.0001°.

“As far as I know, this accuracy is achieved exclusively using Haas Schleifmaschinen production solutions,” concludes Hermle. “Only when software and hardware are ideally matched can a skiving tool be created for manufacturing a perfect gear.”

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