The holidays are here! That means plenty of rest and relaxation, which translates to less time spent in the manufacturing facility. It’s time for a full or partial production shutdown.

If you have precision grinding machines on your floor, our Customer Care team has some helpful checklists for you: machine shutdown procedures for both complete and partial shutdowns. Doing this right will help you ramp back up to production and profitability quickly.

And for the UNITED GRINDING customers out there, this is the perfect time to lock in your preventive maintenance program for the coming year. Customer Care is always standing by and ready to get to work.

Complete Grinding Machine Shutdown Checklist

• Remove all coolant and clear lines of residual coolant (water-soluble coolants)
• Spin the grinding wheel out to dry for at least 20 minutes, then remove it (standard abrasive grinding wheels, specifically)
• Clean all coolant tanks and conveyors and spray them with rust preventative (water-soluble coolants)
• Clean all bare metal surfaces and spray them with rust preventative
• Clean entire enclosure and wipe down all way covers and windows to remove swarf
• Clean and spray all spindle faces and wheel flanges with rust preventative
• Clean and spray all work-head and tailstock tapers with rust preventative as needed
• Move all axes to absolute home positions, including robots as required
• Replace all servo drive, CNC and robot batters /under power (meaning with power on. Especially important if you can’t recall when this was last done.)
• Perform a complete backup of your machine data, CNC data and part programs
• Shut down machine per standard protocol
• Lockout the machine

Partial Grinding Machine Shutdown Checklist

• Remove all coolant and clear lines of residual coolant (water-soluble coolants)
• Spin the grinding wheel out to dry for at least 20 minutes, then remove it (standard abrasive grinding wheels, specifically)
• Clean all coolant tanks and conveyors and spray them with rust preventative (water-soluble coolants)
• Clean all bare metal surfaces and spray them with rust preventative
• Clean entire enclosure and wipe down all way covers and windows to remove swarf
• Clean and spray all spindle faces and wheel flanges with rust preventative
• Clean and spray all work-head and tailstock tapers with rust preventative as needed
• Move all axes to absolute home positions, including robots as required
• Replace all servo drive, CNC and robot batters /under power (meaning with power on. Especially important if you can’t recall when this was last done.)
• Leave machine power on and control “up”
• Operate the axes and spindle on a one hour warmup cycle daily. This helps to keep proper lubrication on moving surfaces.

In all cases, if grinding will not be taking place and you are not emptying the coolant system completely, keep a circulation or aeration pump running at all times to ensure the coolant doesn’t go bad (specifically for water-soluble coolants).

If you have any questions or issues surrounding machine shutdown, contact the UNITED GRINDING Customer Care team 24/7/365 at 937-847-1234.