Objective
Objectives and content
The crankshaft is a critical part of every lifting
cylinder engine. Its dimensional and form accuracy is
not only responsible for the economic life of the whole
engine, but it also directly influences the quality of
combustion and the exhaust rate of the engine.
In the automotive industry, crankshafts are usually a
mass product. Numerous variants in smaller batch sizes
are used, for example, in truck, marine or other diesel
engines. Due to their size and special geometry,
crankshafts are one of the most difficult of components
to manufacture for any combustion engine.
The potential for rationalising the current manufacturing
sequence is very high. There are 4 main stages during
the machining process on a crankshaft: roughing, heat
treatment, finishing and superfinishing. Rough machining
is usually done on turn broaching machines, finish
machining is done on grinding machines and superfinishing
is done on special purpose polishing machines.
Particularly with steel crankshafts for high efficiency
cars and trucks, thermal treatment takes place in special
equipment between roughing and finishing.
The principal objective of the CoCoS project (CBN
Grinding of Crankshafts in one Set-up) is to drastically
reduce this process chain to a single flexible and multifunctional set-up on a single machine, to be demonstrated
on the chosen example of crankshafts.
Main achievements:
A reduction in the number of production sequences for
complex shaped functional parts, by using flexible, outof-roundness grinding, with a 60% reduction in the number
of machines and handling systems required.
An improvement in the machining processes through the
development of innovative grinding wheels to reduce
overall cycle times and costs by 30%.
The development of new non-contact sensing techniques
to maintain the accuracy of the more flexible process to
1 mm repeatability.
The development of grind hardening (in which the
grinding process is used to simultaneously heat treat the
component surface) for crankshaft steels combined with
the development of less pollutant coolants to give a 60%
reduction in energy consumption and pollution.
The consortium brings together six industrial partners
and three research centres from four different EU
countries. The partners have been selected for this
project in order to complement and enhance individual
capabilities and to enable a European exploitation of the
results. The collaboration of End users from car and
track industries, Machine Tool builder, Grinding Wheel
manufacturer, monitoring system and coolant producer with
research organizations, from the first stage of the
process design will guarantee the success of the project.
The partners have contacts throughout the complete
European automotive and truck industry. These contacts
will ensure the spreading of the project results beyond
the consortium, through licenses or joint ventures. With
further industrial development beyond this proposed
project, it is expected that the technology will be
introduced into mass production within a further 2-3
years.
After a successful completion of the project it is
envisaged to extend the benefits of the project to other
parts within the automotive industry as new oval shaped
pistons, camshafts and transmission shafts and also
towards to other Sectors: Paper Machinery (production of
lawn mowers), Capital Goods like Machinery, Handling
Systems (production of camshafts, constant velocity
joints).
The priority research tasks within the programme
addressed by this project are 1.1.7M and 1.1.5M.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques.
- engineering and technologymechanical engineeringmanufacturing engineeringsubtractive manufacturing
- engineering and technologymechanical engineeringvehicle engineeringautomotive engineering
- natural sciencesearth and related environmental sciencesenvironmental sciencespollution
- natural sciencesmathematicspure mathematicsgeometry
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Call for proposal
Data not availableFunding Scheme
CSC - Cost-sharing contractsCoordinator
20870 ELGOIBAR
Spain