Sulzer, a fluid engineering technology specialist that manufactures pumping, agitation, mixing, separation and application technologies, has committed to a three-year contract with MSC Industrial Supply Co (MSC). The company originally switched to MSC during the pandemic and, within weeks of signing the contract, MSC had identified hundreds of thousands of pounds of potential savings.

For instance, with six-figure savings already identified on both rough-turned Inconel and Super Duplex shafts at Sulzer’s Leeds facility, MSC turned its attention to the remaining +0.3 to +0.5 mm of stock left on the shafts for finish grinding; a process conducted on an 8 tonne Churchill BX cylindrical grinding centre.

The first step was to introduce Tyrolit, so MSC could apply grinding wheels better suited to Inconel and Duplex. The Tyrolit grinding wheel technology runs at identical parameters to the previous wheel, but is 30% less expensive and allowed Sulzer to double the depth of grind from the existing 0.05 mm, to 0.1 mm on plunge-only diameters – saving a huge 119 minutes per shaft by reducing the grinding cycle time by 7%.

In addition, when grinding various shafts from 2 to 4 m long, each of the 23 journal diameters on the shaft previously underwent three rough-grind dressing cycles, followed by a final finish-grind dressing cycle. In total, Sulzer was incurring 114 minutes of non-grinding time during the full process for all 23 journal diameters.

The solution was to design a dressing station that could position no more than 700 mm from the grinding wheel to reduce this non-productive time. As a result, non-grinding time from the wheel dressing cycle is now just 58 minutes per shaft.

For further information
www.mscdirect.co.uk