Design and Development of Grinding Machine for Flush Grinding of Long Seam and Circular Seam Weld Bead

Abstract

Grinding is one of a major process in any manufacturing industry which plays vital role in production cycle and quality of the product. In manufacturing of pressure vessel, plates are rolled and joined by longitudinal weld to form shell and then di erent shells are joined by circumferential weld to form vessel. The welds leaves weld bead of 2-3 mm, which needs to be ush grind completely in order to provide good surface nish for non-destructive testing (NDT) and also to improve aesthetic look. Manual grinding of weld beads is always an option due to simple process, low power consumption and no set up time required. But it takes high cycle time and surface nish obtained is not of required standard. In order to reduce overall time and power consumption it needs to develop an e ective machine which can ush grind weld seam irrespective of position (horizontal or vertical) of vessel. Present work contains conceptual design of grinding machine for long seam and circular seam weld bead. Detailed design for longitudinal seam weld bead grinding is carried out, which has two clamping arrangement with job. First uses electropermanent magnetic clamping. This arrangement can be used at any location over pressure vessel. Another option of frame structure is provided for grinding shell individually on which grinding arrangement can be tted. Static structural analysis and force analysis are carried out using ANSYS and all components are found well within the allowable stress limits. The developed machine has low cycle time and good surface finish.