GERMANY 07The Lineage of German Grinding Machines

Emery, wheels and the first grinding machines (1871–1913)

The starting point of grinding tools is the abrasive grain. The typical abrasive in 19th-century factories was emery, a natural ore mixing corundum (alumina) with magnetite and other minerals, and emery from the Greek island of Naxos was considered the best. According to the book by the German engineer Haenig, translated into English in 1912, the Naxos deposits belonged to the Greek government; on April 6, 1871, the sales rights were put up for auction, and Julius Pfungst of Frankfurt am Main obtained long-term exclusive worldwide sales rights^[1]. According to the history of today's successor company, on October 15, 1871 these rights passed to a newly founded “company for genuine Naxos emery,” that is, Naxos-Union^[2]. In July 1872 a Danzig newspaper carried an advertisement, with a certificate, stating that the Syra company that leased the Naxos mines had entrusted exclusive sales to Pfungst^[3]. Haenig writes that when the Greek government learned how much profit the German company was making from this monopoly, it did not renew the contract when it expired in the 1880s^[1].

From wheels to grinding machines: Naxos-Union

Naxos-Union did not just sell powdered emery; it also bonded it into a grinding wheel. According to the successor company's history, wheel production began in 1880, artificial corundum wheels in 1900, 1,500 mm vitrified (glass-bonded, fired) wheels for grinding crankshafts in 1905, and resin- and rubber-bonded wheels in 1910^[2]. As wheels came to spin faster, the danger of them bursting became a problem. According to Haenig, when Professor Grübler of Dresden carried out burst tests on wheels from 10 German and American companies at the request of the Association of German Engineers (VDI), the strongest of the wheels with vegetable bond were Naxos-Union's^[1].

The same company also built grinding machines. Haenig's book illustrates, as Naxos-Union products, grinding machines with guards, flexible-shaft motors for grinding and polishing, the “Cui” for sharpening drill points automatically, and a cylindrical grinder with automatic table traverse and wheel infeed. The Cui ground drills up to 4 inches (about 100 mm) in diameter, rotating them about their axis to center the point correctly, and even an unskilled worker could tend several of them^[1]. A device that knocked down grinding dust with a water mist and collected it in the machine base carried German Patent 126,473^[1]. Haenig writes that grinding machines were at first viewed with suspicion by machine builders and only through exhibitions came to be accepted as essential factory equipment^[1]. In the official German catalog of the 1906 Milano exhibition, Naxos-Union's grinding machines numbered more than 450 types^[8].

Finish on the lathe, or finish by grinding?

Once grinding machines entered factories, the approach to finishing changed. Haenig cites a report from Ludwig Loewe of Berlin: a shaft 2.5 inches in diameter and 14 inches long, rough-turned on a lathe and finished on a Norton grinder, took 38 minutes in all, while roughing and finishing on the lathe alone took 48 minutes, and the lathe-finished shaft also needed filing afterward, with results that depended on skill^[1]. Loewe built the American Norton grinders in Germany (Chapter 2: Production Engineering as a Science). Lathe for roughing, grinder for finishing: this division of labor was settled here.

Specialized grinding machines were born too. In 1902 Reinecker of Chemnitz brought out a surface grinder that ground the top and bottom faces of piston rings for steam and gas engines with a horizontal-spindle wheel and a magnetic chuck on a rotary table^[5]. At the 1905 Liège World's Fair, Naxos-Union and Mayer & Schmidt of Offenbach showed planetary internal grinders, in which the wheel spindle traces a circle inside the bore to grind cylinder bores, and Schmaltz, also of Offenbach, showed a vertical type^[5]. Schmaltz's machine placed the fast-spinning wheel spindle inside a double eccentric shaft; turning the two outer shafts in opposite directions moved the wheel spindle gradually off center so that it traced a circle. The inner spindle ran at 4,000 rpm^[1]. Haenig writes that Naxos-Union laid the foundation of the grinding wheel industry around Frankfurt and Offenbach, and grinding machine makers also gathered in this region^[1].

Ball-bearing spindles and the Hirth-Minimeter (Fortuna)

What determines a grinding machine's accuracy and productivity is the spindle that turns the wheel. In 1903 the inventor Albert Hirth and the merchant Emil Lilienfein bought Fortuna-Werke, a maker of leather-skiving machines in Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt^[6][7]. Hirth also founded Norma Compagnie, which made ball bearings for Bosch ignition systems, and designed machines for grinding balls and cages to mass-produce them^[6]. Out of this came the grinding spindle supported on precision ball bearings. According to Fahr's 1969 dissertation (based on Fortuna's 1953 company history), earlier grinding spindles ran in plain bearings and could not turn fast, making it hard to grind small holes with small wheels, whereas the ball-bearing spindle reached 60,000 rpm and quickly spread^[6]. Around the same time Hirth built the Hirth-Minimeter, a gauge that magnifies movement with a knife-edge lever. Depending on the model, its accuracy ranged from 1/100 mm to 5/10,000 mm; even unskilled workers could check dimensions quickly, and it supported bearing mass production^[6][7].

What it means on the shop floor. The premises of today's grinding, “the wheel is a consumable,” “spindles run fast on rolling bearings” and “size is reached by measuring as you go,” arose in this era inside wheel companies and bearing companies. When you look at an old grinder's spindle, whether it runs in plain or rolling bearings tells you what speeds it can reach and whether it is good at small-bore internal grinding.

Hydraulics, plunge grinding and in-process gauging (1914–1944)

World War I turned the grinding machine from “a tool inside parts companies” into “a machine for sale.” According to Fahr, in 1913 Fortuna lured the grinder designer Loose away from Naxos and put him in charge of design, and during the war it was designated to mass-produce grinding spindles as war production, supplying machine tool makers all over Germany. Building on that experience, it brought out its first universal cylindrical grinder in 1916 and built a standard cylindrical grinder in 1919^[6].

Hydraulic feeds and plunge grinding (1926, 1928)

Loose's great achievement was driving the table traverse and the wheel feed by hydraulics. With hydraulics, speeds could be varied steplessly and the reversal of the traverse was smooth. Fahr writes that Fortuna's first hydraulic grinder, shown at the 1926 Leipzig fair, caused as much of a stir as the first ball-bearing spindle had^[6]. Hydraulics also made a new grinding method possible: without traversing the table, a wide wheel is pushed straight into the workpiece from the side. This is plunge grinding (Einstechschleifen). Fortuna's 1928 external cylindrical plunge grinder used wheels up to 900 mm in diameter and 250 mm wide^[6]. In the 1930s it also developed a method of dressing wide wheels, or several wheels stacked together, to a set shape with a hydraulic dresser (a device for reshaping the wheel), grinding several diameters of a stepped shaft at once^[6].

Care is needed with “the first hydraulic grinder.” In the US, Brown & Sharpe began using hydraulics for the feed of cylindrical grinders in 1902–03, and in 1922 Heald brought out an automatic, hydraulically driven internal grinder^[5]. Jung says it brought out the first hydraulic surface grinder in 1925, and Studer a hydraulically controlled cylindrical grinder in 1936, which Studer calls a “world first”^[13][11], but Fortuna's 1926 machine came earlier, and it is safest to read each of these as “the company's first model of its kind.”

Grinding while measuring: the Finitor (1939)

Grinding has a difficulty that turning does not: the wheel itself wears away, so infeeding by the dial does not fix the size. Operators therefore stopped grinding again and again to measure the workpiece. According to Fahr, Fortuna, which built both grinders and measuring instruments, first built a gauge whose stylus stays on the workpiece during grinding and shows progress with a needle, and then Hirth built a device that sends a signal to the hydraulic control and stops grinding automatically when the size reaches the set value. After trials in Bosch's mass production, it went into series production from 1939 as the “Finitor.” With an accuracy of 1/1,000 mm, it made a fully automatic sequence possible: the workpiece is loaded from a magazine, the wheel approaches at rapid traverse, infeeds at a set rate and retracts at size. Fahr sums up that less-skilled workers could grind precision parts, one person could tend several machines, and rejects fell^[6]. By 1939 Fortuna was a company of 900 people^[6].

The specialist grinder makers take the stage

In this era, grinding machine companies whose names survive today appeared one after another: Studer of Thun, Switzerland (1912), and Kellenberger of St. Gallen (1917, its first universal cylindrical grinder)^[11][12]; Karl Jung, who began building high-precision grinders in Berlin (1919)^[13]; Schütte of Köln, which built tool and universal grinders to sharpen the tools of its own multi-spindle automatics (1919; universal tool grinders WU2 to WU4 in 1934)^[14]; Walter, later a tool grinder company (founded in Düsseldorf in 1919, moved to Tübingen in 1924)^[15]; Robert Blohm, which began as a measuring instrument works in Hamburg (1924)^[17]; and Mägerle of Switzerland, which entered grinding machines in 1932^[18]. In 1938 Jung created the basic structure of the surface grinder, with a cross slide and an upright column (G 60)^[13]. According to Fahr, when Fortuna entered universal grinders in Stuttgart in the 1920s, Karl Unger (later Schaudt KG) was already building the same kind of machine; later Fortuna moved toward crankshaft and oval piston grinding, and Schaudt toward grinders for piston pins and camshafts^[6].

Universities that study grinding

Grinding also became a subject of university research. Georg Schlesinger of TH Berlin published Wirtschaftliches Schleifen (Economical Grinding) in 1921, discussing form grinding and the grinding of automobile parts^[16]. At the WZL in Aachen, Herwart Opitz stepped up grinding research from 1936 and took on state research into preventing grinding cracks in chromium-molybdenum steel for aircraft through the choice of wheels and grinding fluids. Dissertations appeared on the effect of grinding fluids (1939) and on precision grinding (1943)^[19]. In 1937 Gotthold Pahlitzsch took over a chair at TH Braunschweig whose name included “grinding and polishing technology,” and from 1950 he led the Institute for Grinding and Polishing Technology^[22] (for the course of research, see Chapter 2).

The war also cast a shadow over grinding companies. Marie Pfungst, who headed the Dr. Arthur Pfungst-Stiftung, the owner of Naxos-Union, was forced out of the foundation by the Nazi regime in 1936, and in 1942 she was deported to the Theresienstadt camp, where she died^[2]. The Jung works in Berlin was stripped of all its equipment in 1945^[13] (Chapter 3: War and the East-West Division).

Recovery in East and West: centerless and creep-feed grinding (1945–1968)

West: Göppingen, Hamburg, Stuttgart

In West Germany, grinding machine companies relocated and started over. Jung re-established itself in Göppingen in 1948, and in the same year Blohm built a surface grinder with ball guideways^[13][17]. Ball guideways have less stick-slip at the start of motion than sliding guideways, so fine feeds work well. An Allied report on the 1951 Hannover fair records that Schaudt Maschinenbau of Stuttgart-Hedelfingen showed internal grinders for bores of 20–400 mm and a gear grinder that roughs and finishes the left and right flanks of a tooth at once with two form wheels, and that Blohm of Hamburg-Bergedorf showed surface grinders^[24]. In 1953 Walter brought out a fully automatic tool grinder (which the company calls a world first), and in the same year Schütte patented a grinding head suspended in a gimbal (two-axis swivel) that let the helix and clearance angles of milling cutters be set without conversion tables^[15][14]. In 1965 Studer put the wheel spindles of all its machines on hydrodynamic bearings (bearings in which rotation builds an oil film that floats the shaft)^[11].

East: centerless grinders from Leipzig (Mikrosa)

In East Germany, Arno Krebs (founded 1901), a milling machine company in Leipzig-Mockau, became a people-owned enterprise (VEB) in 1948^[49]. According to the notes of the Saxon State Archives, this works, after a series of mergers, took over the centerless external grinder first built in 1949 and in series production from 1951, and created the “Mikrosa” trademark in 1952. It was renamed Fräs- und Schleifmaschinenwerk Leipzig in 1958 and VEB Mikrosa Leipzig in 1964, and from 1965 made only the SASL series of centerless grinders^[23].

A centerless grinder does not hold the workpiece on centers; it supports and turns it at three points, the grinding wheel, the regulating wheel (a slow-turning wheel bonded with rubber or similar) and the blade (work rest), while grinding it. No center holes are needed, and workpieces can be fed through or plunged one after another, which suits mass-produced round parts such as piston pins, rollers and valve stems. In June 1958 the British journal Machinery reported Mikrosa's SASI 200 automatically feeding diesel engine cylinder liners from a magazine and plunge-grinding 70 an hour while monitoring size with an electric gauging head. The wheel was 24 inches (about 610 mm) in diameter, driven by 40 horsepower^[27]. In 1970 Mikrosa became a plant of the East Berlin machine tool combine “7. Oktober” and kept improving the SASL for the Soviet automotive industry^[23].

Deep cuts, slow feeds: creep-feed grinding (1962)

The usual method of surface grinding is reciprocating (pendulum) grinding (Pendelschleifen), in which the table traverses quickly and each pass takes a cut of a few to a few tens of μm. By contrast, grinding the form in one go with a cut several millimeters deep and a very slow table feed is creep-feed grinding (Tiefschleifen, deep grinding). Blohm says it began this method in 1962 with its HFS surface grinder^[17]. Because the arc of contact between wheel and workpiece is long, the machine needs high rigidity and an even feed, the wheel must be soft and porous so that it does not load, and large volumes of grinding fluid are needed. In return, difficult shapes such as turbine blade roots can be ground from hardened material without intermediate milling. Blohm went on to CNC creep-feed grinders (1980) and the 12-axis GC 1200 DK grinding center for turbines (1983)^[17].

Junker is founded (1962)

In the same year, 1962, Erwin Junker started a company in an old mill in Nordrach, a village in the Black Forest. In 1963 he built a grinder for sharpening the points of taps (thread-cutting tools), and in 1966 the NAJ I for fully automatic grinding of tap flutes, starting out in tool grinding^[28][29].

What it means on the shop floor. Centerless grinding “makes parts round just by passing them through, with no center holes,” but roundness varies greatly with the setup of the regulating wheel angle, blade height and workpiece center height. Creep-feed grinding goes “from roughing to finishing in one pass,” but the key is how grinding fluid is applied to prevent grinding burn. Both became mass-production processes in Germany in the 1950s and 60s.

CBN, high-speed grinding and CNC (1969–1992)

CBN wheels and high-speed grinding

First synthesized in 1957 by Wentorf at GE in the US, cubic boron nitride (CBN) is the hardest abrasive after diamond, and unlike diamond it hardly reacts with ferrous materials^[32]. When GE launched it in 1969 as “Borazon,” an industrial abrasive for grinding hardened steel^[31], German grinding wheel and grinding machine makers took it up at once. Naxos-Union made vitrified-bond CBN wheels in 1978 (its successor's history calls them “the first”), and in the same year, 1978, Junker launched a high-speed grinding machine using CBN wheels^[2][28]. In gears, KAPP of Coburg has used CBN for grinding hobs since 1971 (see Chapter 8).

CBN wheels wear slowly and hold their shape, but they are expensive, and to get the most out of them you need to raise the wheel's peripheral speed. At a higher speed each grain cuts a thinner chip, more material is removed in the same time, and the wheel wears less. In return, the whole design of the machine changes, from the spindle bearings, wheel balancing and the guard against a bursting wheel to the way coolant is applied. University research followed this too. At WZL, Opitz, König and colleagues reported in 1970 on surface grinding at higher wheel speeds for higher removal rates^[33], and at TU Berlin, Spur and Druminski wrote a review of high-speed grinding in 1973^[34]. In 1977 Druminski published a study of creep-feed grinding high-speed steel with silicon carbide and CBN wheels; in 1981 Spur and Klocke studied grinding hard-to-machine high-speed steels with CBN wheels; and in 1986 Spur and colleagues moved on to creep-feed grinding non-oxide ceramics with diamond wheels^[35][38][42].

Grinding at a point: Junker's Quickpoint (1985)

Junker tied high-speed CBN grinding to a new way of grinding. QUICKPOINT, presented at the 6th EMO Hannover in 1985, runs a CBN (or diamond) wheel only a few mm wide at high speed and tilts it slightly to give clearance, reducing the contact with the workpiece from a line to a point in external grinding^[29][41]. Instead of grinding steps and tapers in one go with a wide form wheel, the narrow wheel traces the contour, so shoulders, tapers, chamfers and grooves can all be ground in a single clamping, and it is said to cope well with changeovers between part types^[41]. Junker filed a patent for a method and device for high-speed form grinding of rotationally symmetric workpieces, with priority from March 1984 (published September 1985)^[40]. The company entered the automotive parts business from 1987 and calls EMO 1989 its “breakthrough into the automotive industry”^[29].

NC and CNC grinders

Grinding machines went NC a little later than lathes and milling machines, because in grinding the control must also handle measuring the wheel wear, restoring the wheel's shape with a dresser and compensating the infeed for it. Among its joint research projects with industry up to 1980, IPA Berlin, a TU Berlin institute, developed “computer control for grinding machines with automatic dressing devices”^[50]. Heidenhain is also said to have supplied a special control to Fortuna in Stuttgart before it officially launched its own NC^[50].

In the late 1970s, NC and CNC grinders appeared from maker after maker. In 1976 Studer used Granitan, a mineral casting of stone grains bonded with resin, for machine bases (patented), and in 1977 it developed a CNC cylindrical grinder (the company calls it the world's first)^[11]. In 1977 Jung launched the JF, Germany's first NC precision surface and profile grinder, and in 1979 it built the PA30K, a profile dresser that shapes the wheel by moving three axes under NC (both are the company's own descriptions)^[13]. In tool grinders, Walter launched the NC helitronic 20 NC in 1977 (the company calls it the world's first), and Schütte launched the WU50CNC4 with 4-axis contouring control in 1980 and the 6-axis WU500/750CNC6 in 1988^[15][14]. In Switzerland, Mägerle built a surface and profile grinder in 1980 with hydrostatic guideways and a hydrostatic wheel spindle that could remove 1 kg of material an hour, and launched its first CNC surface grinder, the MFP, in 1985^[18]. Jung launched a series using Siemens SINUMERIK 805 and 810 controls in 1989, and in 1992 the JC500Z grinding center, which changes workpieces and wheels automatically^[13]. In the East, Mikrosa also built CNC machines from 1976; making about 400 a year, it had become the world's largest maker of centerless external grinders^[23].

East German and Soviet grinders and Western companies

East German cylindrical grinders were made by the grinding machine works in Karl-Marx-Stadt (now Chemnitz). The Saxon State Archives catalog records that this works' SA 5 x 630 external cylindrical grinder won the “Gutes Design” award at the 1978 Leipzig Spring Fair, and lists the works, together with Mikrosa and the grinding wheel plant (Dresden-Reick), as plants of the 7. Oktober combine^[37]. There was also a division of labor across the East–West divide. According to a 1987 US government translation, the director of Krasnyy Borets, the surface grinder plant in Orsha in the Soviet Union, said it was producing in cooperation with Elb-Schliff of West Germany and sent up to 100 of its 500 exported machines a year to Elb-Schliff^[43].

★Consolidation and UNITED GRINDING (1993–)

Crisis and Körber Schleifring

In the early 1990s a worldwide recession made automakers and turbine makers stop investing, and grinding machine makers suffered. In an interview in UNITED GRINDING's company magazine, Werner Redeker, former chairman of the executive board of Körber AG, recalled that Schaudt did not receive a single inquiry for six months^[36]. Kurt A. Körber, who had built up the cigarette machinery maker Hauni in Hamburg-Bergedorf, had bought neighboring Blohm in 1978 and Schaudt of Stuttgart in 1983^[17][51][39], and Blohm and Schaudt exhibited side by side at EMO 1992. From 1992 Körber gathered German and Swiss grinding and tool grinding machine makers, and in 1993 Körber Schleifring was formed^[36]. After reunification, the former East German Mikrosa shed staff and land under the Treuhand privatization agency, and in 1993 it was bought by Körber^[23]. In 1994 Studer and Mägerle of Switzerland joined^[11][18], and Mikrosa took over the product lines of the centerless grinder maker Herminghausen and of Koenig & Bauer's Multimat^[23].

The group kept changing shape. Jung of Göppingen joined in December 1998 and merged with Blohm in 2008 to form Blohm Jung^[13][17]. Walter AG's machine tool division joined in 2004 and became Walter Maschinenbau^[15], and the Schaudt and Mikrosa companies, which carried the Studer name, became Schaudt Mikrosa in 2009 and were consolidated in Leipzig in 2010^[23], and in November 2021 they were absorbed into Blohm Jung^[46]. In 2013 Körber Schleifring separated from Körber AG and, together with United Grinding Technologies of the US, became one group (the UNITED GRINDING Group)^[36][11].

Other paths: EMAG, DVS, Getrag, Hardinge

Not every company joined one group. Another place where companies gathered was EMAG, maker of vertical pick-up lathes. EMAG took over Karstens (external grinding of shafts) in 1997, Reinecker of Ulm (internal grinding of chucked parts) in 1999 and Kopp (camshaft grinding) in 2000, and in 1998 it launched the VSC 250 DDS, which turns and grinds on a single machine^[44] (Chapter 5: Lathes). The crankshaft grinder business of Naxos-Union in Frankfurt also joined the EMAG group in 2002. According to EMAG's history, Naxos-Union launched the PM 460 in 2007, which grinds crankshafts weighing up to 6 t and up to 6 m long. “Pin chasing,” in which the wheel follows the crankpin as it turns around the main axis, is a method the company pioneered^[44]. The grinding wheel plant moved to Butzbach in 1992 and became Naxos-Diskus of the DVS Technology Group in 2005^[45][2]. Fortuna joined the Getrag group in 1975, closed its Stuttgart plant in 1994 and continues making leather machines and spindles in Weil der Stadt^[7]. Kellenberger of Switzerland was bought by Hardinge of the US in 1995 and became independent again in 2024^[12]. Junker took over three plants in the Czech Republic in 1992 and became a group^[28], and CBN grinding is still its signature.

Research and the future

Joint research between institutes and companies continues. From 2000 to 2004 Blohm took part with WZL in AGNETA, a research project on speed-stroke grinding, which grinds hard-to-machine aero-engine materials with fast reciprocating strokes, and in 2005 it launched PROKOS, a fast-reciprocating grinder^[17]. Grinding machines also got a trade show of their own. VDW started GrindingHub, a trade show dedicated to grinding technology, in Stuttgart in 2022; in 2026, 462 companies from 28 countries exhibited^[47].

What it means on the shop floor. Today's grinding machine nameplates have changed many times through mergers. Parts and service for old Schaudt, Mikrosa and Jung machines come from Blohm Jung, old Naxos-Union crankshaft grinders are looked after by EMAG, and Fortuna grinding spindles by the company in Weil der Stadt: following the family tree shows you today's point of contact (see the family tree below).

Links with Japan

Japanese precision grinding took German machines as one of its models. The Lindner (Berlin) thread grinder bought in 1936 by the gauge maker Kuroda Kyohan Seisakusho (now Kuroda Precision Industries) was the third in Japan, and is said to have cost more than the company's monthly output^[20]. Lindner FS1 and FS2 thread grinders bought in 1937 survive in Seki, Gifu Prefecture, as industrial technology heritage items registered by the National Museum of Nature and Science^[21] (Japanese Archive, Chapter 3 timeline).

With NC grinders, Japan has some earlier examples. In 1964 Okuma Iron Works showed at a trade fair the GCS-N, a numerically controlled cylindrical grinder fitted with its own NC unit^[30], and Okamoto Machine Tool Works developed the NFG-5 CNC surface and profile grinder in 1968 (the company calls it the world's first)^[52]. The “firsts” of Studer's CNC cylindrical grinder (1977) and Jung's NC surface grinder (1977) are best read as claims within each company or country^[11][13]. In CBN too, Toyoda Machine Works began research on CBN wheels around 1972^[53], so CBN grinding moved toward mass production in Japan and Germany at about the same time as the 1978 CBN products of Naxos-Union and Junker^[2][28].

German grinding machine makers also came directly to the Japanese market. Junker exhibited at JIMTOF in Tokyo in 1992^[29], and Walter says it completed its worldwide sales and service network by setting up its own base in Japan in 2003^[15]. In gear grinders, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries began building gear grinders in 1966 with technology from Reishauer of Switzerland, and KAPP set up a base in Japan in 1988 (see Chapter 8: Gear Machines).

FAQ

What kind of company was Naxos-Union?

It was a company founded in 1871 by Julius Pfungst in Frankfurt am Main to sell emery (a natural abrasive) from the Greek island of Naxos. It made grinding wheels and also grinding machines. From 1918 it was owned by a foundation, and later it was known for crankshaft grinders. Its grinding machine business joined the EMAG group in 2002, and its grinding wheel plant joined the DVS group (Naxos-Diskus) in 2005.

Was creep-feed grinding (Tiefschleifen) born in Germany?

It is a way of grinding the full form in a single pass with a deep cut and slow feed. Blohm of Hamburg says it began using this method on its HFS surface grinder in 1962, but this chapter could not confirm who first came up with it. In the 1970s and 80s German universities (TU Berlin and others) researched creep-feed grinding with CBN and diamond wheels.

What is Junker's Quickpoint?

It is a high-speed external grinding method that Junker presented at EMO Hannover in 1985. A CBN (or diamond) wheel only a few mm wide runs at high speed and is tilted slightly so it touches the workpiece at a point, tracing contours such as steps, tapers and grooves in a single clamping.

Which companies belong to UNITED GRINDING?

It grew out of Körber Schleifring, formed by Körber AG in 1993, which became the UNITED GRINDING Group in 2013. Its brands include Blohm, Jung and Mägerle in surface and profile grinding, Studer, Schaudt and Mikrosa in cylindrical grinding, and Walter and Ewag in tool grinding. The Schaudt Mikrosa company was absorbed into Blohm Jung in 2021.