First of PTG Holroyd’s advanced new gear grinding centres ready to ship

A third HG350 model, which is still in build, will remain at 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 will soon be on its way to North America, a second machine will be used by a major gear manufacturer and a third, which is still in build, will remain at PTG Holroyd for product demonstrations and assisting customers with component development.

PTG Holroyd Sales Director, Mark Curran said: “We are incredibly excited to be validating the first of our new machines ready for delivery and commissioning.

“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 – which replace the company’s well-established GTG2 machine tool 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,” added Mr Curran. “They are also easily able to accommodate each customer’s Industry 4.0 strategy and are future proofed against legacy software issues.”

IO-Link communication technology is offered with all new HG350 machines and RFID scanning is a further option that will assist users in achieving new levels of performance.

Particularly suited to machines destined for production cells, the feature will all but eliminate human error by helping ensure that virtually any component or tooling item that needs to be switched between manufacturing cycles is correctly changed for each gear grinding operation.