The holidays are often filled with food, gifts and warmth for all, but for manufacturing facilities, there’s another component: full or partial production shutdowns to celebrate and recharge.

If you have UNITED GRINDING machines on your floor, our Customer Care team has a couple checklists you’ll want to see today: machine shutdown procedures for both complete and partial shutdowns. Correctly shutting down your machines helps to ensure a rapid return to production and profitability when the time comes.

So as you consider how to slow things down for the holidays, take these guidelines into account.

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.