Coborn Engineering, which designs and manufactures specialised CNC grinding, polishing and lapping machines for the diamond tooling and gemstone industries, is taking advantage of Kaydon bearings from RA Rodriguez to help boost the performance of its Planetary Grinding (PG) series machines. In this extremely high-precision application, Kaydon bearings are an essential element of the machine, allowing users to process diamond cutting tools to radius form waviness levels of 50 nm (0.00005 mm).

The latest version of the PG series, the PG6, is an automatic, ultra-high precision grinding machine for processing natural or synthetic SCD tools. Coborn’s PG6 is a world-first engineering solution that relies on high-quality bearings for the precision manufacture of controlled waviness and complex geometry tools.

To verify the performance of its PG6 machines, Coborn performs a TRC [tool radius check], which is essentially a microscope with image analysis software to measure tool radius and radius waviness.

“The system generates custom-designed QC graphical data sheets that we can then supply with the associated tool,” explains Bullman. “Our PG Series machines generate waviness values of sub 50 nm, which is market leading. The bearings are a key part of the machine, allowing users to process diamond tooling to these accuracies.”

RA Rodriguez supplies Coborn with Kaydon KD series high-precision, angular contact, preloaded bearings in duplex (back-to-back) configuration. Each Coborn PG machine requires a pair of these 7-inch diameter bearings. The company has been a customer of RA Rodriguez for the past 22 years and has been using Kaydon KD series bearings since 2013.

Concludes Bullman: “We are a very well established customer of RA Rodriguez and appreciate their high-quality products and the support offered over the years, which continues to this day.”

For further information
www.rarodriguez.co.uk