KREBS & RIEDEL celebrate their 125th Anniversary and gears up for the future

The cornerstone of the KREBS & RIEDEL grinding wheel factory in Bad Karlshafen was laid some 125 years ago. Today the family owned company operates worldwide as a manufacturer of individually manufactured precision grinding wheels and impresses with innovation and solution-oriented application technology advice. Above all, customers from the automotive, aerospace, mechanical engineering, medical technology and wind power sectors rely upon the high-precision products manufactured by Krebs & Riedel. In addition to conventional internal and external grinding wheels, cutting wheels, cup wheels and grinding segments with ceramic and synthetic resin bonds, KREBS & RIEDEL also manufactures CBN and diamond tools with ceramic bonds. The medium-sized family business with over 250 committed employees and an annual turnover of 31 million euros is one of the leading German manufacturers of abrasives. An export share of around 48% shows the companies international orientation. Krebs & Riedel has subsidiaries in China and India, as well as 30 international distributors including Advanced Grinding Solutions Ltd of Coventry here in the UK. A team of application technology consultants looks after customers worldwide. KREBS & RIEDEL attaches particular importance to research and development and works closely with several research institutions. Important investments in sustainability management and the expansion of the Bad Karlshafen site are currently being planned. KREBS & RIEDEL is a specialist in the field of gear applications and supplies top gear manufacturers around the globe. These grinding wheels are used on many gear grinding machines, including those from the manufacturers Gleason, Kapp-Niles, Klingelnberg, Liebherr, Mitsubishi, Reishauer and Samputensili. Single-profile and composite tools for fine or polishing grinding operations are available to achieve the fine surface quality and high load-bearing proportions. These combinations can be combined and delivered with the tried and tested compositions as well as with the Blue Moon specification. Advanced Grinding Solutions now supplies Krebs wheels to several top UK gear manufacturing companies who are able to call off specially profiled wheels for gear production on fast deliveries. Under agreement Krebs can keep customer’s blank wheels in stock and upon order will profile these to suit and then supply within just 2 or 3 days. The effective "Blue Moon" wheels for continuous generating gear grinding Blue Moon 147A and 148A - specifications for increased economic efficiency through extended dressing cycles and increased removal rates in the grinding process. By using special abrasive grain geometries and proportions in connection with an optimized pore space design, a very high level of ease of cutting with little heat input and high cutting performance is achieved. Unprofiled or pre-profiled for modules 1 - 12 in the highest quality according to customer specifications for grinding speeds of up to 80 m/s Continuous generating grinding with fine and polishing zone. KREBS & RIEDEL produces a wide range of dressable grinding worms with a ceramic bond for your gear machining. All specifications guarantee the highest profile accuracy with the lowest thermal loads on the workpieces. The combination of our grinding worms with fine-grain or polishing worms creates powerful tools that enable grinding and polishing in one application. The following design variants of the compound screws are possible: Unprofiled or pre-profiled forms for modules of 0.8 - 5, larger modules are possible upon request. Krebs & Riedel offers a new carbon fibre base body variant for CBN and diamond abrasives. The proportion of carbon fiber guarantees maximum strength with the lowest weight. The body is up to 75% lighter than a comparable steel body. In addition to easy handling during assembly, extremely smooth running is achieved. This means that the load on the grinding spindle is lower. In addition, they offer significantly better damping behavior than conventional base bodies. This is with interrupted cuts and grinding processes with changing contact conditions. In addition, the carbon base bodies are often used when machining small filigree components. The grinding behavior is more harmonious and leads to improved surface quality. With the new CBN wheels an increase in productivity can be achieved through increased stock removal with an improved service life. Thanks to the fact that the base body can be re-assigned, good economic efficiency is also achieved, despite the higher material price. Therefore, it is not just a short-term thought, but a trend that will also prevail over the long term. The working speeds are up to 100 m / s. Depending on the composition, higher working speeds can also be achieved. Chris Boraston, Managing Director at Advanced Grinding Solutions, comments: “When selling very high precision grinding machines that cost from £250,000 to well over £1,000,000 then it’s clearly important that only the very best grinding wheels are used and indeed these are the only way in which we can fulfil and exceed our customer’s expectations. Krebs & Riedel are very process focused and really study a customer’s application in detail before suggesting what type of wheel should be used. They certainly do not simply offer an alternative to an existing wheel and prefer to look very hard at the application and to offer wheels based upon their own experience rather than someone else’s. Furthermore, we can rely upon the support of technical engineers who will also help set-up a customers grinding machine to ensure that test wheels on trial bring the results that are necessary in terms of large improvements in quality, cycle time, or often both. Such has been the success that we have had here in the UK with Krebs; we now hold an extensive stock here for same day/next day delivery to our UK customers and this stock holding is growing as more and more engineering companies discover the advantages in improved part quality and in cost savings that Krebs wheels brings to them. Furthermore, unlike some other grinding wheel companies, Krebs understands that many end users do not want to purchase lots of wheels for stock if that can be avoided and therefore for most grinding applications there is no real minimum order quantity and where there is we are also able to retain wheels here at our base in Coventry and only supply, and therefore invoice, as customer’s actually need them. Some of our UK customers literally only order a single wheel from us two or three times a year, others have several hundred wheels every month. Some buy large CBN wheels that can be expensive and others need small internal grinding wheels for bore grinding or jig grinding applications. Krebs is really able to support all customers – both large and small and that’s very important indeed to us as is their amazing track record of never having been late in supply on their quoted delivery time of a single wheel over the many years we have been doing business with them”. Customers wishing to improve their grinding processes are invited to contact AGS who can arrange for free of charge test wheels to be made available to prove out the superior quality and efficiency that is achieved when choosing the latest wheel technology from Krebs & Riedel.

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