grindaix GmbH was founded in 2004. The goal and vision of the young company was to provide a solution for customers that avoids the waste of cooling lubricant in the grinding process and makes it more productive and of higher quality. The process-optimised cooling lubricant supply solutions enabled grindaix to establish itself in the market for cooling lubricant supply solutions. In 2021, it was sold to the world's largest industrial fluid manufacturer, Quaker Houghton, giving it the opportunity to further expand its vision and enter new markets. All this happened under the leadership of the founder and managing director of grindaix GmbH: Dr. Ing. Dirk Friedrich.
About 20 years after the foundation of the company, the long-time founder and managing director Dr. Ing. Dirk Friedrich MBA leaves the company. After successfully managing this company for the last two decades, he passes the baton to his successor Roman Stabauer M. Eng. who now leads the company as the new Managing Director.

"I am very happy and it is a great honour to succeed Mr. Dirk Friedrich as Managing Director of grindaix. Since the beginning of my professional life, I have been involved with the topic of adapted and efficient cooling lubricant supply in grinding processes and thus there has also been a close cooperation with grindaix for a long time. After joining the company last year as technical manager, I am now looking forward to taking the next step and successfully continuing the business of grindaix in close cooperation with Quaker Houghton."

Under the new management, the grindaix team will continue to ensure that your grinding processes are designed to be resource-efficient, productive and of high quality. In the future, the product variety will be further increased by the development of innovative sensors in close cooperation with Quaker Houghton. If you are considering optimising the cooling lubricant supply to your grinding processes, please do not hesitate to contact us.

Now the gFlex system can be easily configured online. Use our new online request form to configure your desired gFlex system.
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Quaker Houghton continues to pursue building our Industry 4.0 business. “Our strategic acquisition of Grindaix is a critical step in bolstering our Fluid Intelligence offering. With this acquisition, we are strengthening our automation capabilities to ensure we bring superior and differentiated value to our customers. Fully brining the Grindaix team into QH will help us strengthen our automation capabilities in the coming years” said Joe Berquist

Dr.-Ing. Dirk Friedrich will continue to be in charge of the company's management. "We are very pleased that we, as a German innovation provider, are able to offer our new globally successful partner technological added value in the context of optimizing cooling lubricant systems. Together with our expertise in the field of cooling lubricant supply in grinding technology, the additional high level of cooling lubricant competence of our new partner will now lead to a more comprehensive offer to our customers. This will enable us to support our customers much more intensively in mastering the ever-increasing complexity within the framework of productive, high-quality grinding technology that is free of grinding burn." [Dr.-Ing. Dirk Friedrich, MBA

To achieve consistent results in manufacturing, coolant lubricants must be maintained. Most of the maintenance is done through the process of coolant filtration. Through coolant filtration, contaminants are separated from the cooling lubricant and removed from the coolant circuit. Thus, coolant filtration is primarily responsible for ensuring that the coolant purity is as consistent as possible. Without MWF filtration, the cooling lubricant would become so contaminated after only a few process runs that a stable process would no longer be possible. In addition to the lack of quality of the product to be manufactured, this circumstance would primarily have an impact on the economic side. Without coolant filtration, the coolants would have to be replaced continuously, which would entail considerable costs. In practice, various systems are offered for coolant filtration, some of which differ considerably from one another in terms of functional principle and design.

In the magazine article on filtration in the coolant circuit, you will learn which filtration processes are available and how they differ.

Here you can go to the first part of the centerless grinding.

Furthermore, with the help of this new nozzle technology, it is possible to significantly increase the service life of the grinding tool, especially for face shoulder-, tool-, flat profile-, crankshaft-, camshaft- and gear profile grinding. The return on investment after purchasing the customized GRX-X cooling lubricant nozzle is achieved within one year.

The nozzles can be manufactured from wear-resistant stainless steel (conventionally produced) or from titanium alloys using the 3D printing process. All Grindaix nozzles are suitable for operation with oils and also water-based cooling lubricants (emulsions). On our state-of-the-art Grindaix test rigs, the nozzle characteristic consumption curves per nozzle function chamber are generated and provided to the customer for use within a process-adaptive control of the cooling lubricant feed conditions. The novel nozzle combines 4 different nozzle functions simultaneously and time-parallel in one component. In a first step, the nozzle expertly diverts the air cushion rotating with the grinding wheel via a targeted liquid jet. The liquid jet compensates for a wear-related loss of radius of up to 6 mm during its wind discharge in a process-safe manner. A second nozzle stage cleans the grinding wheel topography from process-related clogging. In a third step, the now free bond pores are selectively impregnated with cooling lubricant. In the fourth and final functional step, the contact zone between the component and the grinding wheel is additionally supplied with cooling lubricant via a cooling nozzle.

With the aid of this nozzle technology, grinding machine manufacturers can use a single standardized nozzle component to reduce the number of variants in the machine, instead of the multiple nozzles per grinding spindle, which are sometimes designed very differently. This system can be standardized and modularly constructed so that it can be easily adapted to any application without always having to order completely new nozzles. It reduces the possibility of errors in nozzle position, adjustment of spray angle, etc.

In the best case, the nozzle is supplied for all 4 functions, including the cleaning of the grinding wheel, by only one, simple and inexpensive centrifugal pump (<25bar). The pressures per chamber of the nozzle can be controlled either via valves or, of course, via frequency-controlled pumps and can be regulated in a process-adaptive manner, e.g. via the active power signal of the grinding spindle. The nozzle design is adapted to the application-specific grinding geometry. All pressures in the nozzle chambers can be tapped separately if desired. Recording of the cooling lubricant supply data, for example via a Coolant Monitoring System, or the machine control system serves to ensure the application-specific reproducibility of successful process settings. This nozzle technology allows the grinding technology user to achieve a much more economical process control immediately after successful installation.

We would be pleased about your interest in using this new nozzle technology in your company. Please do not hesitate to contact us. The grindaix team is at your disposal at any time.

Contact us now!

You can read the article on Quaker Houghton's site here: https://investors.quakerhoughton.com/news-releases/news-release-details/quaker-houghton-enters-joint-venture-grindaix

“This partnership is an excellent strategic fit with broad application.  We see several advantages for our customers investing in system automation and optimization trends evolving from Industry 4.0,” said Joe Berquist, SVP & Chief Strategy Officer for Quaker Houghton.  “Grindaix’s advanced capabilities enable us to deliver on our promise to make our customers more competitive, as we combine advanced product chemistry with equipment solutions to deliver an optimal package for performance, cost, and quality.  We call this powerful combination 'Fluid Intelligence'. Grindaix’s data based approach to coolant system operation has been growing steadily in the German market, and we see an opportunity to leverage their technology across our broader solutions portfolio.”

"We expect close cooperation with our strong and professional partner to successfully establish state-of-the-art digitization solutions in the field of operating supplies for production machines," says Dr.-Ing. Dirk Friedrich MBA, Managing Director of Grindaix GmbH. “The aim is to offer our joint customers in the manufacturing industry the most innovative cooling lubricant supply technology and associated monitoring solutions with AI-based optimization tools and to harmonize this with the most economical application of process fluids for our customers worldwide. The entire team grindaix is looking forward to mastering the upcoming challenges even more successfully than we have done in the past.”

About Quaker Houghton

Quaker Houghton is a global leader in industrial process fluids.  With a presence around the world, including operations in over 25 countries, our customers include thousands of the world’s most advanced and specialized steel, aluminum, automotive, aerospace, offshore, can, mining, and metalworking companies.  Our high-performing, innovative and sustainable solutions are backed by best-in-class technology, deep process knowledge and customized services.  With approximately 4,200 employees, including chemists, engineers and industry experts, we partner with our customers to improve their operations so they can run even more efficiently, even more effectively, whatever comes next.  Quaker Houghton is headquartered in Conshohocken, Pennsylvania, located near Philadelphia in the United States. Visit www.quakerhoughton.com  to learn more.

About Grindaix

Grindaix specialises in optimising and modifying the lubricoolant supply systems for machine tools and in designing lubricoolant filtration systems that conform to technical, economic and environmental requirements. Or to put it simply: the technical solutions from grindaix let you avoid any waist of lubricoolant in your metal processing work. The young, innovative company, a spin-off from RWTH-Aachen, is dedicated to a solid yet very simple concept: a locally based, highly professional CRAFT solution to improve the productivity of manufacturing plants. Increased productivity and at the same time the avoidance of unnecessary demands on resources - that is our objective.

In this article you will learn which different approaches are used to overcome an air cushion. The goal of all approaches is to avoid or reduce the negative influence on the cooling lubricant jet. The Grindaix team hopes you enjoy reading this article.

As a provider of digitization solutions for the digitization of production machines, we offer you a brief orientation in the facts in our new magazine article.

Learn in detail about the possible disturbing influences of several areas in two new articles from Team Grindaix. We report on the effects and problems that can arise if the cooling lubricant supply of a grinding process does not meet the requirements and show you how a cooling lubricant supply runs correctly!

A beneficial, customer-oriented production is the goal of every company - and a great challenge at the same time: the requirements for quality, costs and production time must be met and at the same time reconciled with the issue of sustainability. In series production, the cooling lubricant supply has a significant influence on the process result and is often considered the cause of quality variations.

Record and analyse process factors

Nevertheless, the process factors on which these qualitative differences depend are rarely investigated. "Many companies don't even deal with this question," knows Tobias Kaufmann, research associate at the Machine Tool Laboratory of RWTH Aachen University and head of the Digital in NRW transfer project. "But the larger the supply chain becomes, the more machines are connected to each other, the more important it is to know how each individual system is supplied with operating materials such as compressed air, water, electricity or cooling lubricant, where the pressure is and what the temperature or germ load is. Only with the help of the quantitative recording of these status variables in a networked system can differences and errors in the process be detected and compensated for," says Dr.-Ing. Dirk Friedrich, Managing Director of grindaix GmbH. "However, many companies do not yet record these parameters despite their technical feasibility."

Development of a digital process monitoring system

In order to achieve clear predictions on the supply of operating materials in production, Digital in NRW and Grindaix are working on "Resilient process control through AI-based cooling lubricant supply during grinding", the official title of the transfer project. The idea behind this is the development of a digital process monitoring system. With the help of artificial intelligence, errors and deviations in the supply of the machines are to be detected, recorded and recommendations for action developed in the future. The transfer project with Digital in NRW sets the course for a sustainable cooling lubricant supply with high quality standards. "Predicting failures in the supply chain and taking direct action to avoid interrupting the production process is becoming increasingly important," says Kaufmann.

From the actual state analysis to testing

The experts from Digital in NRW first recorded the possibilities of a centralised or decentralised cooling lubricant supply of a machine tool as part of an ACTUAL analysis and identified communication interfaces. This was followed by the development of a target concept: in close cooperation with the company, a suitable sensor system for recording relevant coolant supply parameters was developed, as well as a technical solution concept for digitally networking the individual interfaces. "We are currently testing coolant monitoring with the latest fluid sensor technology in a research environment to generate and analyse data," explains Tobias Kaufmann.

Simulation on the demonstrator

In the machine tool laboratory in Aachen, work is being carried out on analogue test benches and a demonstrator with pipeline, pump and sensor technology is being set up to simulate the various process sequences and causes of faults: What happens when a pipe becomes clogged? What if the pressure is too low? "The challenge is to create a database that the algorithms can work with," explains Tobias Kaufmann. The connections between cause and effect must be researched, and recommendations for action must be developed. "To do this, we have to record scenarios from real operations and transfer them to the test bench in order to record their effects on the data," says the project manager. The core of the transfer project is to develop a methodology for plausibility checks that can later be transferred to various applications. High-quality plausibility checks provide "the basic prerequisites for subsequently derived recommendations for action, which should ultimately improve process control and not cause a machine crash." The more data available, the greater the later coefficient of determination of the algorithms.

More efficiency, less waste

Subsequently, three representative cases are to be transferred from the demonstrator to the real environment and the findings are to be used in real production. The plan is to use the developed concept in an assistance system on a series machine and prepare it for practical use. "Small and medium-sized manufacturing companies can certainly benefit from the development," Tobias Kaufmann emphasises. "The use of this system creates resource efficiency, more process reliability and the reduction of rejects, which in turn can save costs."

Grindaix supplies you a multifunctional nozzle for your grinding process. In our new article the function of the GRX-X nozzle is described in detail and a concept for its control is presented.

The Grindaix team wishes you a lot of fun while reading!

Get to know the Grindaix full-service package on our Condition Monitoring Theme World and get a deep insight into how it works and the possibilities that are open to you. From planning, advice on sensor selection and installation of hardware and software, to commissioning and training of your employees - WE take care of everything!
With our associated monitoring software package, you can not only monitor and store your data in real time, depending on limits, but also view your individual production in a virtual image.

Have fun while discovering.

For many years, efforts to achieve an ecologically sustainable production technology were seen as costly rather than cost-saving. This approach of the company management has changed. Today, manufacturing companies are increasingly implementing measures to reduce the consumption of materials, energy, water, operating supplies and auxiliary materials.

However, mainly small and medium-sized companies often lack technically experienced starting points and orientation aids to be able to implement sustainable resource efficiency in production technology in a practical and cost-effective manner without restrictions in product quality and yield.

Innovative approaches for the successful digitalization of production environments arise from the monitoring of resource consumption. The latter requires a modular and standardized monitoring technology in the form of an easy-to-install IT infrastructure for existing machines. The production and delivery of such an IT infrastructure is the main contribution of the Grindaix GmbH. We supply our customers with a complete package (ready to connect) for simple, but accurate and reproducible data acquisition in the context of all their resource consumption, for small, medium and large companies and all sensors common in industry.

The Grindaix digitisation system enables you to

• standardized IT infrastructure (plug&play) including server, display unit and visualization software
• uniform data format (OPC-UA)
• uniform time stamp of all collected data
• real-time monitoring of all machines, systems and components
• limit value dependent monitoring per sensor and measured variable
• recording of the data History
• data exchange with existing machines

All technical information can be found here.

The main advantages for customers who make a timely decision to digitize their production environment are:

1. Scalable and manufacturer-independent digitization technology for your production machines (existing machines)
2. A technically clean data test (OPC-UA) on selected machines for your IT (data usage) as an IT independent isolated application (server, display etc...)
3. Enabling the use of artificial intelligence in production engineering in your production - and the resulting customer benefit - increase production robustness!

Don't miss the opportunities offered by digitisation.

Whether in terms of

• Minimization of your operating materials consumption,
• the increase of your production robustness or
• to increase quality assurance,

the use of digitisation technology will enable you to achieve measurable success.
We would be pleased to present the digitization package to you in a targeted manner at your company. You can find your contact person here.

We look forward to your contact.