Waltz Bros. Inc. specializes in machining, grinding and finishing of precision components using state-of-the-art manufacturing technology. Two areas of specialization are the hydraulic and aerospace industries. “Waltz Bros. Always strives to find new and better ways of doing things. When we recognized the need for new honing equipment we wanted it to be flexible enough to process a wide range of materials and part configurations. At the same time the honing machine had tomaintain very high quality standards of the finished parts and increase product throughput,” said Larry Waltz, President, Waltz Bros. Inc. One of the parts Waltz Bros. Hones is an aerospace hydraulic pump cylinder block with several bores. “The problem we were facing is the time it takes to finish hone the cylinder bores doing them one at a time. The bore s needed to be air gauged to see if there were any anomalies in the size, taper or if there was any out of roundness. If there was, we had to go back and finetune the bores with another honing process. This quality control inspection is done for every single hole on every component piece and is very time consuming,” said Mr. Waltz. “The goal was to find a machine that performs the honing in each bore, has accurate in-process gauging and also automation to index the part,” said Mr. Waltz. “After meeting with engineers from Sunnen Products Co.,we selected the Sunnen SV-1015 vertical honing machine that could be customized to our specifications and was flexible enough to accommodate honing not only the cylinder block bores but also other parts, producing high quality components and at the same time increasing productivity,” said Mr. Waltz. The Sunnen SV-1015 vertical honingmachine has a 10 HP spindlewith a speed range of 100 to 4,000 RPM. Itwas fitted with a Mitsubishi robot for indexing, and an Etamic air gauging system for in-process quality control. The machine also has a Windows based PC control. The entire process of honing a cylinder block now consists of the operator loading the part onto a “floating” X-Y air bearing fixture and pressing the start button. The table will then index to the honing station where the first bore is honed to size. The table then indexes to the air gauging station where several diametrical readings are taken within the bore and stored within the Windows based PC control. If the bore is within specifications the table indexes to the Mitsubishi robot where the part i s repositioned in preparation for honing the next bore. If the bore is out of specification the machine stops and the operator is alertedwith a flashing red light. If a negative dimensional trend is detected, the machine will automatically adjust the size and stroke cycle to correct the problem. The cycle repeats until all bores are honed and the operator can unload the finished part. The machine indexing table has four (4) stations to mount modular toolingwhen setting up different parts. The Windows based PC controller can be programmed to achieve optimum cutting performance and consistency. The customization with the new machine enables Waltz Bros. To process parts with minimum operator intervention. “Although we had the machine designed for the cylinder block configuration, it is flexible enough to handle a variety of parts. The flexibility of the Sunnen SV-1015 allows for easy change over of existing tooling to accommodate applications that are currently processed on other less automated honing equipment within our shop,” said Mr. Waltz. “We have exceeded all of our goals. We have tripled productivity and decreased operator intervention by 80%. Our process capability has increased from the required 1.33 Cpk (Process Capability Index) to 2.21 Cpk, which is beyond 6 sigma process control” said Mr. Waltz. Waltz Bros. Manufactures hydraulic pump cylinder blocks, rotor assemblies and numerous other high precision component parts for the hydraulic and aerospace industries, where the manufacturing process require numerous operations including turning,machining, drilling, assembly, OD/ID grinding, honing and lapping. The components being processed vary inmaterial type, hardness, size and tolerance requirements. “With the Etamic air gauging we save time on quality control. The cylinder blocks are flight critical for the aerospace industry.Alot of the components we manufacture go into flap actuators in different aircraft. The components are required to be serialized, each with its own traceable quality inspection history. On every aerospace cylinder block we run we can download the quality inspection data and provide that to our customer,” said Mr. Waltz. A Mori Seiki NL1500SY is used to turn the cylinder block blank, a Zeiss Duramax coordinate measuring machine is used to measure and scan the bores at different depths prior to honing, and a TRUMPF TruMark laser marker engraves the serial numbers and other identification on the components. Waltz Brothers acquired all of these machines from Ellison Technologies. Waltz Bros. In Wheeling, IL, was founded in 1939. The company offers a broad range of machining capabilities including 2- and 3-axis lathes, subspindle barmachines, Swiss screwmachines, verticalmachining centers, horizontalmachining centers,multi-pallet machining centers, OD/ID cylindrical grinding, OD/ID thread grinding, OD/ID form grinding, out of round grinding, infeed/thru-feed centerless grinding, Blanchard grinding, CNC surface and creep-feed grinding, precision lapping, vertical and horizontal honing, wire EDM, welding and assembly. Quality control capabilities include three Zeiss coordinate measuring machines with scanning capabilities, OGP optical comparators, Precitech roundness checker, OGP Flashscope, Mitutoyo surface finish & profile checker and several Micronite quality data collection stations throughout the shop. “Waltz Brothers focuses on manufacturing high tolerance precision components and assemblies that require abrasive finishing such as grinding, honing or lapping andwemanufacture the rough blanks that we will eventually grind. Our goal is to be recognized as the best, highest quality component manufacturer in the country,” said Mr. Waltz. For more information contact: LarryWaltz, President Waltz Brothers, Inc. 10 W. Waltz Drive Wheeling, IL 60090 847-520-1122 info@waltzbros.com www.waltzbros.com