Walter Graf -- Gear Technology Author

Walter Graf

After completing his toolmaking apprenticeship in 1974, Walter Graf worked for ten years in tool and mold making workshops. He subsequently he continued his studies in Australia and the UK and was awarded a Bachelor of Science Degree (Honors). In 1992, he began as a Product Manager for super-abrasive grinding and dressing tools at Winterthur Technology Group, Switzerland, and before the purchase of Winterthur by 3M in 2011, he held the position of Chief Marketing Officer for the entire Winterthur Group. At 3M, his role changed to Global Segment Leader for bonded abrasives. Since January 2014, he holds the position of Marketing Manager for gear grinding machines at Reishauer AG, Switzerland.

Articles by Walter Graf

FEATURE ARTICLES | 2024-10-22

Digitization of Hard Fine Machining of Gears in a Production Environment

This article by Reishauer AG summarizes the insights gained from digitization in the machine tool sector, highlighting the long-term collaboration between the two companies. ZF Getriebe Brandenburg GmbH, distinguished by a team of over 1,500 specialists, leads in producing exclusive manual and dual-clutch passenger car transmissions used in high-end German sports cars for maximum precision and performance. A crucial factor in the quality of these transmissions is the precise ground gears manufactured on machines from Reishauer AG, a Swiss pioneer in gear grinding machines.

FEATURE ARTICLES | 2023-12-11

Polish Grinding of Gears

This article introduces the process of polish grinding of gears. Improved surface quality increases the overall efficiency of gearboxes, resulting in reduced friction and torque loss, higher power density, and noise-optimized gears (lower NVH); all these factors are highly relevant, especially for electric drives. When Reishauer developed polish grinding in 2012, the process aimed to improve the efficiency of ICE engine transmissions, and the set goals were easy to achieve. Today, in 2023, the situation is dramatically different. While an ICE engine operates at around 3,000 rpm and supplies acoustic masking of the gear noise, EV drivetrains feature up to 20,000 rpm and offer no such masking.

FEATURE ARTICLES | 2023-08-28

ARGUS “Swarm-Based” Gear Grinding Expertise

This article describes a cloud-based process and machine component monitoring system called ARGUS. The term “swarm” is used for a large population of gear-grinding machines of individual and independent customers connected to the ARGUS system and the ARGUS cloud. These “swarm” machines permanently feed their anonymized process data into a common cloud database. Reishauer uses this database for big data analytics to discover patterns that indicate successful process and machine component behavior patterns worth integrating into the ARGUS algorithms and propagate them across the complete ARGUS customer base.

TECHNICAL ARTICLES | 2017-06-01

Twist Control Grinding