Honing to be featured in May

For the May issue’s focus on abrasive machining, I’m writing a multiple-source article about honing. One of the sources is Lapmaster Wolters LLC. To gather additional insight about honing, I visited the machine tool builder’s headquarters in Mount Prospect, Ill., where I met Rick Lundy, director of sales for Barnes Bore Honing & Finishing Systems, and Kyle Bastian, the company’s marketing/IT coordinator. Accompanying me was CTE Managing Editor Greg Bartlett.

Although I had previously conducted a telephone interview with Lundy, we continued our conversation about honing equipment before taking a plant tour. I was informed that honing is a small but integral part of the company’s line. The company employs 68 people at its headquarters and has a global workforce of about 900. In addition to a couple of U.S. subsidiaries, Lapmaster Wolters has ones in Europe, Asia and India.

During the tour, which started in the area where the company performs contract lapping services on Lapmaster machines, we had the opportunity to see a number of single-pass and conventional stroke honing machines. One was an 8-spindle single-pass machine in which the part is indexed from station to station and a honing tool removes a specific amount of stock at each station. The sequence might progress from roughing to semifinishing to finishing to superfinishing, followed by a deburring brush.

Another machine (pictured) being built to hone barrel rod tubing has an overall length of at least 80' (24.4m) and 32' (9.8m) of stroke.

According to Lundy, Lapmaster Wolters builds more stroke-honing machines than single-pass ones. “I’m picturing what we have on the floor right now, and we have a 60/40 mix, with 60 percent stroke honing and 40 percent single pass.”