Radiac Abrasives, a Tyrolit company, has been a leading manufacturer of conventional bonded and superabrasives in North America for more than a century. As a leading full-line producer of grinding wheels, Radiac offers more than 50,000 precision-built products of high quality, performance, and repeatability for virtually every manufacturing application. The company’s longevity can be attributed to a service that goes above and beyond with a dedicated technical service agent to the gear industry. In fact, Radiac has 17 application engineers who are the industry experts in grinding applications across all industries.
Radiac Abrasives began as A.P. deSanno in 1891 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The Radiac trademark was established in 1929, and the company name changed from deSanno-Universal to Radiac in 1985. Since then, Radiac has merged with many abrasive companies, most notably National, U.S. Diamond Wheel, Pacific Grinding Wheel, and Bates Abrasives.
Tyrolit acquired Radiac in 2009. The Tyrolit Group is one of the world’s leading suppliers of innovative solutions in grinding, cutting, drilling, honing, dressing, and polishing. It employs about 4,400 in 12 countries on five continents.
Tyrolit is a part of the Swarovski Group. If that name doesn’t conjure up images of delicate crystal creations, it should. Throughout its history, Swarovski has produced innovations and inspired creative trends in fields as varied as jewelry, fashion, accessories, lighting and interior design, culture, and industrial research and development.
A hundred years of merging ideas, service, and experience pushes Radiac Abrasives to put its customers first, while finding the best possible solutions for their grinding needs through creative flexibility and high standards of excellence. Part of that excellence comes from Radiac’s continuous training offered to its 500 employees that make up the company’s three U.S. manufacturing facilities. Radiac’s facilities in Salem, Illinois, and Marysville, Washington, produce conventional abrasives. Its Oswego, Illinois, location manufactures superabrasives.
Training helps keep those facilities at the top of the industry. In April 2015, Radiac launched Radiac Technical Institute (RTI), which provides training and knowledge to Radiac’s customers and sales team. Both Illinois facilities offer day-long training sessions. The current class includes Abrasives 101, Abrasives 102, and Grinding Wheel Safety.
In addition to training at the Radiac facilities, RTI has brought its training to its customers. This lets RTI and its sales organization educate on-site engineers, operators, and purchasing agents.
“The opportunity to bring our training directly to the operators brings Radiac a great advantage in the marketplace,” said Kevan Earl, director of Application Engineering and RTI’s technical training coordinator. “It allows us an opportunity to gain direct access to the operators on the shop floor. In addition, we are able to further build the relationship with the customer … an opportunity that is priceless.”
Earl has more than 30 years of experience in the abrasives industry, including 21 years at Radiac. It is experience like Earl’s that has allowed Radiac to expand its training opportunities even further and broaden RTI’s scope. Future courses include Engineering Principles, Product Offerings, and application-specific training.
Radiac’s expertise and continued push for excellence comes together to bring its customers the highest quality products in the industry.
The Mira product line, developed by Tyrolit, supports all hard gear finishing requirements. Mira Ultra offers a high performance level of worm grinding wheels that’s attributed to the newly developed Ultra bonding matrix, together with the appropriate choice of grain and grain size. The wheel design uses a porous structure that holds its profile. This allows both an increase in grinding speeds/feeds as well as increased parts per dress.
The Mira Rex product line provides the optimum production solution for high-efficiency honing. The development of new specifications guarantees the maximum performance from the honing wheel and increased dressing intervals.
Thanks to Mira DDG, the company is a market and technology leader in the field of diamond dressing gear production. Honing wheels are trued and sharpened during the dressing process. Due to their high level of reproducibility and cutting ability, Mira DDG dressing gears guarantee optimum dressing results, the best possible tooth geometry and surface quality, as well as long tool service life.
Tyrolit launched the Mira Ice in 2014 for discontinuous profile gear grinding. That was followed by the 2016 release of the Mira Ice for continuous generating gear grinding. The Mira Ice product line meets the requirements for profile grinding large gears. A new approach to development resulted in economic efficiency and “cool” grinding previously unheard of.
Mira BG offers an optimum solution for grinding bevel gears. Maximum profile holding, in conjunction with reduced thermal stress on workpieces, allows a larger number of units to be machined in each dressing cycle. The steel cores can be processed more than once, enabling them to be reused.
Radiac’s bevel gear wheels guarantee maximum profile retention for spiral bevel gear grinding, with increased dressing cycles, shortened grinding times, and a low thermal load on the workpiece. The specifications for grain and bond are specially adapted to and optimized for the machine types and gears in question. The cup wheels can be supplied either pre-profiled or non-profiled.
Radiac’s products and services are top quality. But that mark of excellence not only echoes through the present, but also into Radiac’s future.
“We have a well-developed R&D team in Schwaz, Austria, that brings new product offerings to the gear manufacturing market every couple of years,” said Dennis Brown, an application engineer specializing in the gear industry.
With a firm grasp on the now and a watchful eye on what comes next, Radiac Abrasives will continue to be a leading innovator for its customers in every field.
“With Tyrolit being a market leader in gear honing products, we are raising the bar in the future that will take the honing wheel performance to the next level,” Brown said.
FOR MORE INFORMATION: www.radiac.com
