KNOLL Maschinenbau, Bad Saulgau, has replaced its Minimum Quantity Lubrication system ControLube with the AerosolMaster®system, which is based on ATS technology (aerosol dry lubrication). The system can be supplemented by cryogenic cooling technology. This has come about by the KNOLL acquisition of Rother Technologie GmbH & Co. KG, Bad Urach, including all of its patents, retroactive to July 1, 2019.
For five years, KNOLL Maschinenbau, one of the leading suppliers of conveyor and filtration systems for chips and cooling lubricants in metal processing, has been offering an alternative to wet-cooling lubrication. Managing Director Matthias Knoll is certain that “There are production areas where the future clearly belongs to minimum quantity or dry lubrication.”
Matthias Knoll is sticking to his opinion, even though the company is now discontinuing its previous MQL product – the high pressure ControLube system: “Because of its lubricating results, ControLube is a very good system that produces a particularly fine aerosol. Its disadvantage: It requires a lance through the spindle, which many machine tool manufacturers can not implement. With AerosolMaster®, we have now found an alternative lubrication system that achieves a comparably fine aerosol but is much easier to implement in the machine.”
Rother Technologie. Managing Director Reiner Rother explains: “We were looking for a partner or successor to whom it would make sense to hand over our MQL know-how, which has been acquired over nearly 25 years, and who will continue our products in the long term. KNOLL Maschinenbau, with its experience in the MQL business and its worldwide sales and service structures, was a desirable candidate for us. ”
At EMO, Reiner Rother further described the features of the AerosolMaster® : “Even without a lance in the spindle, we can perfectly lubricate the tool cutting edge and prevent heat from machining.” The technology behind it: The fine aerosol (droplet size 0.1 μm to 0.4 μm) is produced in a pressure vessel via a special venturi nozzle and patented control and regulation technology. Like the usual cooling lubricants, the aerosol is guided along a single channel, for example, through the internal cooling channels of the tool to the cutting edge.
In addition to the high aerosol quality, which has been repeatedly verified at Knoll, Matthias Knoll was particularly impressed by the simple installation: “Not only conventional MQL systems can be converted to the AerosolMaster®. Without much difficulty, it is even possible to convert many wet-cooled machines.”
With the acquisition of Rother, KNOLL has yet another trump card up its sleeve: The AerosolMaster® can be combined with the cryolub® cryogenic cooling technology – also patented by Rother – for example, into the AerosolMaster® 4000 cryolub®. By using liquid CO2, the cutting contact zone can then be cooled down to -78 °C. This is particularly advantageous in the case of heavy-duty machining of titanium and other materials that have a low thermal conductivity. Reiner Rother summarizes this in figures: “With the ‘normal’ AerosolMaster®, we can achieve a productivity increase of 30 to 70 percent; with the cryo system, the increase is even greater, between 70 and 200 percent.”
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