Manufacturing Machinery World April 2021

DLyte solution obtains a consistent finish
avoiding generating any polishing marks on
the surface, such as those generated by
conventional machining, and is able to
process complex geometries without
generating any micro scratches on the surface
which is the case with robot based belt
polishing or machines using barrels filled
with hard media. Chris Boraston, Managing
Director at AGS, comments that after seeing
the DLyte machine he immediately
recognized just how unique and special it
was and the many advantages that it brings
for the polishing of a wide variety of medical
parts; many of which are ground on the
grinding machines already sold by AGS.
The medical industry was amongst the
first to benefit from using the D-Lyte
machines for polishing implants. The typical
process to finish implants was previously
based on using mechanical abrasive based
processes like robotised belt polishing cells
or vibratory bowl type polishing machines.
These type of process’s work by generating
friction onto the workpieces surface from a
generic abrasive belt or hard media.
Although there are other procedures that
involve dry polishing, this type of polishing
primarily refers to circular bowl type
vibrators. These may be used to round part
edges and to polish the surface of implants.
GRINDING
Those processes tend to present issues as
they can be error-prone and it’s hard to
certify a specific success-scale as they don’t
offer a true consistency of results. These
processes are not usually as reliable as the
DLyte process and often require additional
manual rework to achieve the desired
finishing results. D-Lyte machines achieve a
superior surface finish than abrasive
polishing type machines and the process can
be more than 5 times quicker than
mechanical abrasive machines and for the
Medical Industry, DLyte has proven the
Biocompatibility of the medical products
processed using the DLyte System.
The 3D additive manufacturing of
implants and other medical components is
becoming the norm and not only are the
DLyte machines also suitable for polishing
metal additive manufactured implants they
provide superior results than existing surface
finishing technologies. This is crucial as one
of the main issues that additive
manufacturing has is being able to achieve a
good surface finish after the parts have been
produced.
An independent surface finishing study
carried out by the Fraunhofer Institute for
Additive Manufacturing Technologies
looked at the various machines and processes
used for the surface finishing of titanium and
stainless steel additive manufactured parts. It
considered, amongst other criteria, the
surface finishes obtained, erosion rates and
effects, and the edge rounding of inner and
outer edges. Various finishing processes
were benchmarked against each other
including abrasive blasting where a stream of
abrasive material such as sand is propelled
onto the surface under a high pressure,
vibratory bowl finishing, chemical and
electro polishing, and shot peening. The
DLyte process achieved not only the best
surface finishes but it was at least twice as
good as the next best alternative process.
Anyone interested in any of the advanced
solutions offered by AGS can view videos
and download additional information from
the AGS website.
www.advancedgrindingsolutions.co.uk
Manufacturing Machinery World, April 20215