If you look up high-speed grinding in Wikipedia, you’ll find lots of interes­ting information about “grinding rail­way tracks”. And Vossloh Rail Services are experts in this particular field.

In order to prevent fatigue damage (microcracks, ripples), a grinding train is used to grind down the rails. Each time it whizzes past, it takes off 50 µm. The high-speed grinding carried out by Vossloh is a kind of circumferential grinding, with abrasive wheels that are passively driven and hydraulically applied. The train travels along the tracks at speeds of up to 100 km/h, so there’s no need to close the train line. Just three transits (2 x rough machining, 1 x finishing) is enough to successfully remove 0.1 mm, returning the rails to their former glory with a surface roughness of Ra < 8 µm.

So that’s how high-speed grinding works at Vossloh. But to find out more about how high-speed grinding works on a Multigrind^® grinding machine with built-in high-frequency spindle, and what kinds of applications are possible using this technique, just send me an email.

Yours Thomas Bader

PS: Don’t blame it on the grinding experts next time your train’s running late.