MicroStar
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MicroStar Finishing – Grinding – Honing 3-in-One Honing meets Finishing

Thielenhaus and Gehring – An all-round solution! Three processes on one machine In order to offer an innovative solution for the machining of pinion gears to our customers, we have jointly developed the new MicroStar 285. Generating customer value – investment, cycle time and quality – is the center of our effort. The outcome is one single rotary transfer machine which ideally interconnects finishing, grinding and honing. The MicroStar F-G-H is a high precision machine tool for carrying out several high precision operations in one chuck. This feature eliminates the addition of clamping...

Station 1 Loading and unloading Station 2 Flat finishing – Generating a reference surface At this station the workpieces are loaded and unloaded by handling cells via simple pick & place systems or even manually. The handling of choice depends on the needs of the customer. The automation can be of simple design as the honing process is carried out on single workpieces and not on bundles. In order to achieve the highest specifications regarding parallelism and perpendicularity of the bore towards the faces of the workpiece one face is microfinished, thus generating a reference face for the...

Station 3 Flip over Station 4 Bore grinding After generating a reference surface the workpiece is flipped over by 180° and clamped into the same chuck onto this defined face. This procedure eliminates the influence of chucking errors. The workpiece remains in this position until all subsequent processes have been carried out. Errors generated by multiple chucking are no longer an issue, thus leading to increased qualities regarding machine precision. During this operation the varying oversize, originated by tempering, is removed leaving an optimal amount of stock for the next station, so...

Station 5 Rough honing After the bore is ground, the rough honing process takes place. Here the bore is rough-honed close to the finished bore size using a multiple stone honing tool. This produces the optimized tolerances characteristic of honing, such as roundness, cylindricity and surface finish. The tool is expanded using an electromechanical feeding system, which continuously monitors the feed rate and force. This ensures that during the machining of the work pieces, very small bore size variations can be achieved leading to a very stable process cycle. Rough honing station Tool for...

Station 6 Bore gaging Station 7 Finish honing The bore diameter is determined via an air gaging unit. An air gage mandrel is inserted into the rough honed bore and measures the diameter at multiple levels. In addition the taper of the bore is ascertained by comparing the actual indicated values. Finish honing enables you to reach the final diameter and the required surface quality. This hone operation also uses multiple stone tools which, through the use of the finest CBNabrasives, produce typical surface structures of predefined quality for honing. The finish machining of high precision...

Station 8 Flat finishing side 2 The final finishing process generates the final size of the workpiece. This can be achieved either by a standard constant stock removal or a tolerance narrowing using tool length compensation by our patented ToolSens or by in-process gauging. Here the tools are again cup wheels. The operation is controlled by MicroSens acting also as a first-cut detection. Other process combinations • MicroSens force controlled brush deburring for exact edging within 0-50µm (sharp edged free of burrs) • Tape finishing operations Brush deburring Belt finishing • MicroSens...

Worldwide Presence With our presence on three continents and a total of seven subsidiaries, we are very well-positioned and primed for the increasing globalization of the world economy. Our representatives worldwide stand competently by your side and are your direct contacts in the market. We are on the spot for you and provide the ideal solution for all honing applications.