What Are The Differences between The Cold Rolling And Grinding for Ball Screw?
Publish Time: 2025-09-03 Origin: Site
The difference between cold rolling and grinding of screw rod as follows:
1. The core technology principle difference
Cold rolling: it is a non-cutting plastic deformation processing. Under normal temperature, the metal rod is pressed by a mold with thread texture, forcing the metal material to "flow and shape" along the mold shape, and the thread can be formed in one roll without removing the metal.
Grinding: It belongs to the precision finishing with cutting. First, the thread prototype is roughed out by lathe and other equipment. Then, special grinding tools (such as grinding wheel and grinding paste) are used to repeatedly polish and correct the thread surface and tooth profile, eliminating processing errors and surface marks, so as to achieve high precision.
2. Key performance dimension comparison table
The dimension of comparison | Cold rolling | Grinding |
The essence of the process | Metal plastic deformation (no cutting) | Fine cutting + surface polishing (with cutting) |
Accuracy | Medium (tolerance grade usually C7-C10) | High precision (tolerance grade up to C3-C5) |
Surface quality | There is a slight rolling texture, matte texture, and rounded top | No obvious texture, close to the mirror, sharp tooth contour |
Surface roughness | Ra 1.6-6.3μm | Ra 0.1-0.8μm |
Production efficiency | High (batch rolling, short time for a single root) | Low (multiple grinding processes, long time for a single root) |
Ratio to material used | High (no chips, close to 100%) | Medium (with grinding chips, utilization rate 85%-95%) |
Cost | Low (less equipment investment, low labor cost) | High (high precision equipment + long working hours, cost is high 30%-50%) |
Applicable scene | Low precision, high load, low cost requirements (such as manual lifting table, agricultural machinery adjustment mechanism) | High precision transmission, low noise, long life requirements (such as CNC machine tools, medical testing equipment, semiconductor equipment) |
3. How to choose
Cold rolling: It relies on standardized molds and is suitable for mass production of screws with the same specifications, but the molds for customizing special tooth types (such as non-standard guide thread and variable diameter thread) are costly, time-consuming and flexible.
Grinding: By adjusting the grinding tools and parameters, different specifications and special tooth profiles can be processed, with stronger small-batch customization capabilities (such as custom precision micro lead screws, non-standard pitch screws). However, its efficiency is much lower than cold rolling when producing in large batches.
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