Blohm Orbit 36

Creep-feed grinding uses a slow workpiece feed rate (often 0.5–200 mm/min) combined with a deep radial infeed to remove material in one or a few passes, rather than many light passes. For turbine blade root forms like fir-tree and dovetail slots, creep-feed is the standard process because it generates the precise profile geometry in a single pass with high surface integrity. The slow feed gives the grinding wheel time to cut to the exact form without the workpiece heating excessively — critical for aerospace alloys that are sensitive to thermal damage.

Yes. The Orbit 36's 5-axis simultaneous capability and 600 mm rotary table are well-suited to blisk grinding applications. The C-axis continuously rotates the blisk to index between blade passages, while the X, Y, Z, and A axes position the grinding wheel to follow the blade profile. This replaces the multi-step process of individually clamping each blade — the Orbit can complete an entire blisk in one setup.

The Profimat 408 and 412 are flat-table surface and profile grinders designed for workpieces held on a magnetic chuck or fixture on a linear table. The Orbit 36 is a rotary-table 5-axis machine for components that require rotational positioning — primarily turbine blades, blisks, and round components with complex profiles. They are complementary rather than competing products: Profimat for flat and prismatic grinding, Orbit for 3D turbine and rotational component grinding.

Creep-feed grinding of aerospace superalloys generates significant heat at the grinding zone, so the Orbit 36 requires a high-flow, high-pressure coolant system — typically 100–200 bar jet coolant to penetrate the grinding wheel-workpiece interface. The system must be capable of filtering fine metallic particles to maintain coolant cleanliness and prevent abrasive contamination of the workpiece surface. Blohm typically specifies coolant flow rates and filtration requirements based on the specific wheel and workpiece material combination.

The Orbit 36 is used in AS9100-certified aerospace manufacturing environments and can support NADCAP (National Aerospace and Defense Contractors Accreditation Program) grinding process certification. NADCAP requires documented process controls including coolant chemistry, wheel specifications, dressing parameters, and grinding cycle parameters — all of which are controllable and recordable through the Siemens 840D sl control. Many aerospace OEM customers require their grinding subcontractors to hold NADCAP accreditation.