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[April 2001]
Further Advances in Wet Diamond-Belt Polishing of Tableware
Lippert GmbH (Pressath, Germany) reports that its design and development of the wet diamond-belt polishing process has decisively furthered the polishing of plate bases and cup rims. With this latest system, the company says that the quality of polish is much higher but the outlay on abrasives is much lower. Turnaround times are minimal and all the equipment integrates easily into fully automated production processes.
Just announced is a new retaining system for the cup rim polishing process that is said to hold fast cups with very small bases (30mm) as they pass through the machine. This enables a drastic reduction in the number of pick-ups required for the various types of cups, with only a few models still calling for dedicated pick-ups; the operating costs and turnaround times are both accordingly lower.
The evolution of new, extremely flexible diamond belts has, adds Lippert, made it possible to execute the cup rim polishing process with diamond belts only - meaning shorter polishing times (higher throughput) coupled with longer belt lives (reduced costs) and less dirt caused by detached SiC grains (less washing required).
The company reports that tests performed on the most awkward of cup geometries, followed by gold-rim decoration, have yielded new equipment orders from some big-name producers.
For plate base polishing, Lippert has introduced a flexible diamond-belt based radial polishing concept as an alternative to the tangential approach. Radial polishing is said to offer the advantage of being able to put plates of different sizes through the machine in arbitrary succession, while tangential polishing remains necessary for plates with very small bases and extremely flat shoulders.
The company has expanded its range of accessories to include a surface grinding station, where uneven plate bases can be levelled. It has also devised a special system for all-round surface polishing of unglazed plates, most notably bone china and vitreous china, after their first firing. Dry cylindrical brushes with abrasive-laden bristles serve as the polishing medium. This system is claimed to unite very high polishing quality with short polishing times and low noise levels.
ENDS