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Grinding Techniques – Essential partner to the power industry

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Electricity is a key component in the South African economy, it provides much needed power to homes, businesses and essential appliances for daily life. Despite being a necessity to many, bouts of load-shedding have turned electricity into a luxury commodity for many South Africans. Although abundant in natural form, like static, magnetic and lightning, suitable and usable electricity still needs to be generated by power generating plants, or power stations.

Different types of power plants or power stations include geothermal, nuclear, hydro, and coal fired. One thing that remains a constant regardless of the type, is the need for structures and equipment to generate the electricity.

Power stations are constructed by using a range of materials, varying from concrete used for flooring, cooling towers and dam walls, to special steel alloys for steam pipes and turbines. Fabrication of new parts and maintenance of existing infrastructure and machinery is critical to ensure a steady supply of electricity into the grid.

Grinding Techniques, a company of the Tyrolit Group, locally manufactures and supplies a vast range of abrasive products tailored to the unique requirements of power generation and distribution. As a local OEM, with in-house research and development capabilities, Grinding Techniques has created an extensive range of abrasive products to increase productivity, decrease downtime and reduce overall costs on maintenance and repair work.

Abrasive cutting requirements are covered by a range of discs in sizes from 50 mm up to 500 mm for various applications. One of the many developments targeted at power generation is the 230 mm x 2.5 mm x 22.23 mm Superflex XR cutting disc – specifically designed to cut various steam pipe and boiler tube materials. This cutting disc has been developed to cut cooler and faster, while also providing excellent longevity. The updated and improved structure of the product provides a stronger and safer disc, while also being thinner than normal conventional cutting discs.

Abrasive grinding discs are used for grinding crusher components, welds and various other media. Superflex Heavy Duty, Zirconia and Ceramic angle grinding discs are available in various sizes for hard and heat sensitive metal grinding applications.

As normal cutting discs are not designed to take the side load of a grinding application, they should be used only for cutting applications. The specially designed Cut-Grind disc ranges in diameter from 115 mm to 150 mm, with a thickness ranging between 2.2 mm and 3 mm, allowing for a thinner than conventional profile for reduced material loss in cuts.

For applications such as grinding of weld roots, or back grinding as commonly referred to within the industry, and for cleaning of weld spatter, to blending of welds and cutting out of certain imperfections, look no further than the Superflex Cut-Grind disc. The advanced formulation makes this product much safer than any of its counterparts in the market.

When it comes to precision hand machining of pipes, welds and surfaces, where angle cutting and grinding products may prove to be too large for the application, Superflex Mounted Points and Tungsten Carbide Burrs are ideal. With new developments in Ceramic abrasive technology, stock removal rates are increased, while heat production is significantly minimised, in turn reducing application times.  

Superflex Tungsten Carbide Burrs are manufactured with double cut flutes, which greatly improves chip extraction, material removal rates and surface smoothness. It’s special design not only reduces burr jumping compared to single cut or chip-breaker flute style burrs, but also ensures the swarf or ground particles are chopped off more effectively resulting in the swarf being less of a skin irritant.

Taking all of this into account, material contamination should be considered and avoided with every application. To ensure that the material welds properly after fabrication, surface preparation is critical.

Grinding Techniques offers a range of ancillary products suited for surface preparation ranging from Flap Discs manufactured from Zirconium or Ceramic grains to non-woven abrasives available in discs, belts, rolls, hand pads and more for when finer finishing and polishing is required.

Complementary to this, we also manufacture and supply a range of precision grinding abrasives for surface, internal and external grinding applications, as well as diamond saw blades for concrete and asphalt cutting.

Being a  local abrasive expert, we will provide a full basket, tailor-made solution to virtually any abrasive requirement on or around a power station.

Contact us today for a bespoke solution to your abrasive requirements

+27 11 271 6400 | info@grindtech.com | www.grindtech.com

Edited by: Creamer Media Reporter EMAIL THIS ARTICLE      SAVE THIS ARTICLE ARTICLE ENQUIRY

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