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STC G - 2021 Annual Report

The year 2021 was successful for the Scientific Technical Committee STC "G". Fifty-seven people attended the STC G Winter Meeting in February, and fifty-six people attended the STC G meeting held in Part II of the70th General Assembly in August, both meetings were held as e-meetings due to the pandemic.

Highlights of the STC G Winter Meeting included five technical contributions, one laboratory presentation, and status updates of the 2021 and 2022 keynote papers. The topics of the technical contributions included PVD-coatings for superabrasive grinding wheels, the application of coarse CBN grains in grinding, grinding of additively manufactured parts, the increase of efficiency of the grinding fluid supply and the water hammer effect in water jet machining. In the laboratory presentation, an overview was given on the research in the area of ultra-precise manufacturing in the Ultra-Precision Finishing Lab at the Kyoto University in Japan. The progress of the 2021 and 2022 keynote papers was presented, and the contents were all approved. It was also approved that proposals for the 2023 keynote paper “Grinding of composite materials” as well as for the 2024 keynote paper “Advances in modelling of fixed abrasive processes” will be forwarded to the Liaison Committee as future STC G keynote papers.

The STC G contributions to Part I of the virtual 70th General Assembly included the keynote paper entitled “Grinding and fine finishing of future automotive powertrain components” presented by Mr. Krajnik, as well as eight regular papers. The keynote paper gave a comprehensive review and also a critical analysis of the state of the art in grinding and abrasive fine finishing of powertrain components and included case studies from industry. Future trends in the automotive industry, requirements for powertrain components and corresponding production chains and recent advances in grinding, dressing and texturing were discussed. The keynote paper was well received. The regular papers presented covered a broad range of topics, including shape-adaptive grinding of meta-matrix composites, chemical mechanical polishing, grinding of S-SiC mirrors, surface integrity in grinding of steels, coherent jets for fluid supply, and digitization of the grinding tool topography.

Highlights of the STC G meeting in Part II of the 70th General Assembly included three technical contributions, status updates of the 2022, 2023 and 2024 keynote papers, and a proposal for a future keynote paper. The topics of the technical contributions included the interaction of fluid jet with the grinding wheel, the manufacturing and characterization of abrasive layers, as well as the cryogenic-assisted grinding. Lively discussions of the presentations were, as always, part of the meeting. The success of the 2021 keynote paper was acknowledged. The progress of the 2022, 2023 and 2024 keynote papers was presented, and the contents were all approved. An update on the topic of a future keynote paper on “Advances in magnetic-field assisted finishing” was discussed and very much appreciated, and this topic was forwarded to the Liaison Committee as a future STC G keynote paper in 2025. Mr. Wegener, Chairman of STC G, encouraged the audience to present contributions in the next Winter Meeting in February 2022, especially in the fields covered by the defined future keynote papers. Any abrasive-related topics will be welcome.

During 2021 elections took place for the new STC G officers (for the period starting from 2022). Mr. Wegener will step down after 4 years of service as Chair of STC G, and he will be replaced by Mrs. Yamaguchi. Mr. Heinzel was elected as Vice-Chair of STC G. Mr. da Silva was elected as the new Secretary of STC G. The new STC G board thanked Mr. Wegener for his excellent work and promised to continue to the benefit of STC G.

Konrad Wegener, Chairman, STC G, 11th of October 2021