Slabe Machine uses in-house abrasive process for finishing & roughing parts. Some of the in-house abrasive finishing process we use are grinding, honing, lapping, blasting.
Grinding - We perform in-house grinding on parts having tolerances of down to +/- .0001. We have newer CNC grinders, traditional Cincinnati grinders (which can still hold very close tolerances), ID / OD grinding in-house and Tool and Cutter grinders on which we make are own cutting tools. Having been grinding for over sixty years, we have a large collection of grinding wheels of varying sizes and brands all suitable for various jobs. Since grinding is more of an art than it is a science, all our operators are experienced and have helped establish our robust grinding process over the years.
Our secondary department uses various abrasive tools which include flap wheels, grinding discs, cutting discs, cutting wheels for various deburring, polishing, sanding, abrasive cut-off tab removal operations. We use automation for less complexity process that involving robotics, and can often times ran unmanned / ‘lights out’ depending on the complexity of the process.
Honing - Honing at Slabe Machine is done using new CNC honing, older traditional honing machines and everything in between and on which we can hold tolerances down to +/-.0005. Honing is much quicker and maintains excellent surface finishes that often times might be difficult holding on a CNC machine tool. CNC machining can often times utilize quite a bit of expensive consumable tooling towards the end of holding certain size and surface finish requirements, which is why honing is a process that additionally allows the CNC machine tool to operate at maximum efficiency. On our hones we design, engineer and produce fixtures that almost always hold more than one piece towards the end of minimizing any/all loading time.
Lapping - To avoid dependency on outside vendors and eliminate supply chain issues, we also preform lapping and find grinding in-house. We have a collection of abrasive discs along with part specific carriers that we have been using over years and we can lap multiple workpieces at the same time. In addition we use our abrasive water jet cutting machines to make our own lapping carriers as well us various other workpieces for all our machine tools.
In short, abrasive cutting machines can offer huge advantages. They operate using less consumable tooling than are used on machine tools that cut material, and as such their productivity is significantly higher for maintaining tight tolerances and excellent surface finishes.
