The best of both worlds

The Tiger X flap disc looks different from other metal finishing discs because the flap configuration and material makeup have been altered to offer both aggressive cutting action and long life cycles.

Reducing cost of ownership and boosting productivity—these concepts are often at odds on the shop floor, but they don’t have to be.

Consider metal finishing. A fabricator charged with postweld cleanup on a metal tube might favor a disc that provides maximum cutting action. The fabricator’s main goal is to remove that excess material buildup and move on to the next tube to continue the cleanup operations.

Meanwhile, someone in purchasing recognizes that multiple discs are being used over one shift. Would it be possible to remove the same amount of material if the company were to use abrasive discs that were designed to last a little longer?

So a change is made, and the fabricator tackles the postweld material removal on the metal tube. He senses that the discs aren’t cutting like the previous models, so he pushes the hand-held grinder and the abrasive disc a little harder into the material. As a result, the fabricator is not using as many discs, but he’s expending a large amount of energy as he attempts to be as productive as he was with the older abrasive technology.

That may sound like a hypothetical situation, but it is the reality for many shops, according to Weiler Corp. As it was looking to develop a new abrasive disc technology, the company found that fabricators were focusing on either fast cutting or long life when selecting the discs for their finishing operations.

“We wanted to come up with something that meant the best of both worlds,” said Tony Hufford, Weiler’s category manager, welding fabrication. “So we took our traditional Tiger Disc, which has a good cut rate, and we asked, ‘Could we increase the cut rate on that and extend the life of the products?’”

After 18 months of product development, with the last six months spent on fine-tuning the final design, Weiler rolled out its Tiger X disc in late June. The new abrasive disc has a new grain design, flap configuration, and backing material that is designed to give the fabricator both a high cut rate and a longer life cycle when compared to older generations of discs.

Looking at the disc, the first thing a fabricator would notice is the double-flap arrangement. They are paired together rather than spaced evenly apart around the disc’s circumference.

The upper flap contains the company’s triple split coat material, which Weiler calls its X3 technology. The dark blue color, which is the result of the material mix, stands out from the blue-green color that is associated with typical zirconia alumina abrasives.

Hufford said the material has an “advanced grain anchoring system” that is made possible by introducing ceramics into the more traditional zirconia alumina material blend. When the disc is being used and it digs into the metal to be removed, the grains dig right in and don’t flex back, according to Hufford.

The other flap is made of aluminum oxide and zirconia alumina grains. It wears away faster than the upper flap and creates the fast cut rate.

The disc has an engineered cloth backing with intermixed ceramic alumina and zirconia alumina materials, which contributes to a longer life cycle than the company’s Tiger flap disc.

“We have done more than 60 field tests,” Hufford said. “We have validated the design in doing this.”

Hufford added that the new Tiger X disc not only meets the goals of aggressive cutting action and a long life, but also helps to keep workers safe. He said that fabricators will find that these discs remove metal as efficiently as the metal cutting discs used in the past, so they won’t be digging the power tool into the metal as they might have done with less aggressive cutting discs.