Recycling of Used Up Crankshaft Grinding Wheels 2012-01-1060

For sustainability in automobile manufacturing, recycle, reuse, and repair of used up cutting tools is now an established process. Although many types of tools were designed for one time use and then throw, an increasing awareness of the impact on the natural resources have made manufacturers to put some of these back to use or sell it back to suppliers who have put up a mechanism to extract the elements e.g. Tungsten and use it for manufacturing of new tools. There are many ways in which cutting tools can be recycled. Be it by reshaping a used up throwaway type tool [1], by redesigning of a tool holder for the use of unused cutting edges [2] or reusing short length drills that are used in making of long oil holes in crank case, cylinder head, cam shaft or connecting rods [3]. This paper demonstrates successful use of used up crankshaft grinding wheels. These used up grinding wheels can be reformed and used for grinding of many other automobile parts that require a new grinding wheel of size 600 mm to 750 mm on diameter depending on the machine on which grinding is being done. This has helped us in avoiding the purchase of new grinding wheels and has thus reduced our demand on natural resources.