SNI Heads Grinding Research Center Effort

SNI Heads Grinding Research Center Effort Service Network Inc. said it is spearheading an effort with the Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) to form a grinding research center in Massachusetts. Saint-Gobain is another co-sponsor. SNI is a leading manufacturer of high-precision grinders for the bearing industry, along with servicing the general industrial, marine and agricultural equipment markets. Continuous advancements in the ever-critical grinding process have been responsible for many of the service life gains and various operating geometry options for bearing manufacturers. WPI has a long history in the precision grinding sector. The Norton Company (now Saint-Gobain) got its start when Milton Higgins moved from WPI to strike out on his own in 1868. The founder of Heald Machine Company was a 1884 graduate of WPI, and throughout Heald's 100 year history both Heald and WPI maintained a relationship that benefited both institutions. The grinding research center will host industry consortiums, each with an individual focus. For example, a recent effort was termed a practical applications research consortium, targeting improved outcomes by breaking down and individually studying the key segments of the grinding process. In the research center, an abrasive process lab and surface metrology lab will work together, bringing in WPI's world-class Surface Metrology Lab to measure and characterize surface textures and topography. The SML is among the research centers responsible for groundbreaking work in that characterization, and also for discoveries of the correlations between roughness, adhesion (sometimes called "sticktion") and friction. Interrelationships between these research areas are key to abrasive process research, since abrasive process use those very surface topographies of the abrasives themselves to create the ground surface on the workpiece, as the workpiece itself simultaneously abrades the grinder. Anyone who has had to set up high-precision bearing grinders knows how difficult it is to manage these wear-dependent interrelationships in a production situation. The research center will open new avenues and exploit the capability to examine all these interactions in a world-class facility. These new opportunities to identify and harness potential improvements in the grinding process can then be translated to practical applications on the shop floor. Because grinding is a key process to produce precision components in any industrialized country, the sponsors said they believe grinding centers and consortiums such as this are important to leverage and reinforce global manufacturing competitiveness.