Consulting Services

Consulting Services:

Numerical Engineering honing consulting services is dedicated to helping customers improve their honing machines and processes by replacing the dark art of honing with sound engineering practices.  By considering the complete system -abrasives, coolant, tooling, gauging, machine, and work piece, we can help you meet your quality and productivity goals.

Our background is in research and development, machine design, metrology, and field application with over 30 years working for major honing machine manufacturers and end users.  Our core knowledge comes from the laboratory using advanced test and measurement tools to study the honing process and test new concepts. We build on this base to diagnose process problems and develop robust solutions for field application.

The honing process is typically one of the most expensive and misunderstood machining operations in the manufacturing process and customers struggle for years before seeking help.  Yet many problems are solved with simple, field tested solutions based on recommendations provided with our standard Honing System Evaluation. Common honing issues are:

• High tooling costs and downtime
• High scrap and rework
• Difficult to meet surface finish specifications
• Scratches and other marks in bore.
• Would like to convert to water based coolants.
• How to get plateau honing to work.
• Will single stroke honing work for my application?

Inconsistent surface finish production and inefficient surface finish specifications combine to form one of the most troubling problems in a honing process. Numerical Engineering will work with your manufacturing engineering and product engineering groups to develop a surface finish specification that meets the product requirements and can be achieved with simple improvements to the honing process.

Some examples of satisfied customers and machines that we have experience with.

If you are looking for new materials for your power cylinder, we have experience with many exotic materials such as hypereutectic aluminum, thermal sprayed iron and ceramic coatings. We can provide prototype parts with the latest bearing surface technologies. Just ask what’s new!

Some of the services we provide to improve our customers honing operations include:

• Honing Process Evaluations
• Lean Manufacturing Implementations
• Honing Machine & Process Training
• Coolant Evaluations
• Abrasive Trails and Analysis
• Surface Finish Specification Design
• SPC Implementations
• Design of Experiments DOE
• Power Cylinder Development
• Tool Design and Development
• Machine Qualification