Advanced new gear grinding centres from PTG Holroyd

The first of PTG Holroyd’s newly developed HG350 advanced gear and worm gear grinding centres are currently undergoing factory acceptance testing at the company’s Rochdale-based technology centre, in preparation for shipping to customers. 

One of the new machines, a HG350-WG (WG = worm gear) model will soon be on its way to North America. A second machine, a HG350-G (G = gear grinding) version, will be used by a major gear manufacturer. A third HG350 model, which is still in build, will remain at PTG Holroyd for product demonstrations and assisting customers with component development. 

“We are incredibly excited to be validating the first of our new HG350 helical gear and worm gear grinding machines ready for delivery and commissioning,” comments PTG Holroyd Sales Director, Mark Curran. “The result of a machine tool development programme costing in excess of £1.6 million, our new PTG Holroyd HG350 models incorporate the leading-edge capabilities of Siemens’ new Sinumerik ONE future-proof CNC and mark a new era in the horizontal form grinding of high-quality gears.”

In designing the HG350 range, PTG Holroyd’s objective was to offer customers much more than a new generation of machine tools for the one-off and batch grinding of high-accuracy precision spur and helical gears, as well as worms and screws of up to 350 mm in diameter. “All HG350 machines feature class-leading integrated safety and failsafe features, rich, real-time reporting of machine health and performance data, as well as the highest levels of industrial security,” adds Mark Curran. “Maximising the attributes of the Sinumerik ONE CNC, they are also easily able to accommodate each customer’s Industry 4.0 strategy and are future proofed against legacy software issues.”

Used in tandem with its own machine design packages, the capabilities of the Sinumerik ONE software suite assisted PTG Holroyd in building virtual HG350 machines on the desktop, then grinding virtual gears and threads, testing safety and failsafe capabilities and eliminating potential problems before commencing the machine build. “The virtual machine build and run capabilities offered in the Sinumerik ONE suite further helped us fulfil our ‘right first time’ ethos, enabling us to input and observe entire manufacturing cycles at the design stage,” concludes Mark Curran.