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I was brought up in my father’s
grinding business, was taught business first
hand from nine years old. Dad regularly brought me down to his work in Chicago
starting at four years old, very educational. He put me on a thread grinder in
the summers at 15 years old 'till I went to college at 18.
I remembered taking a mechanical reasoning test in a college physics class and
getting a higher score than the professor had ever seen, whatever that meant!
During my last years with Dad, I set up a second shift, which included three
new employees. It was very successful. Several times a week, during the day, I
handled outside sales. At 22 I returned to help my father again because he said
he needed me.
As my family grew in size, I decided to start D. I. Buchanan Cylindrical
Grinding (35 miles east of Los Angeles). My father
said he would help me. My first two accounts were Screwmatic in Azusa, CA, and Bechler Cams in
Anaheim, CA. Bechler
Cams nearly doubled their business as their reputation for intricate grinding
grew. I was a sole proprietorship lasting 28 years using many unorthodox
approaches. We learned to thrive on the most difficult jobs. Developed a
reputation for it. In Ampex's engineering computer was a note: “that if they
were unable to get a particular part manufactured and ground: call Buchanan.”
When the Challenger exploded, one of NASA’s biggest parts and assembly
producers somehow found me and wanted me to regrind a group of gear pump
shafts. We dealt mostly in high production with materials resistant to grinding.
We produced them at rates twice that of the generally accepted norm, using
specially created coolant and coolant applications with special wheels that we worked
with a wheel company to design. We used mechanical fixturing and handling ideas
finding a way to do almost every part between male or female centers, ball
centers, etc. Held most work to called-out tolerances from .0001 to .0003 with
corresponding concentricity and finishes on diameters ranging from .043 x .040
in length to .750 x 12 in (had ground up to 9 inch diameters), .002 to .004
fillet radii in 440C, etc. On a 50,000 pc ball bearing order. we
ground a .078 wide groove x .062 deep, holding .030 fillet radii max. with a
32 micro finish, .010 root tolerance creating no appreciable burrs on a 1.378 O.D. and produced 3840 pieces in an eight hour shift on one machine using one
operator and one back-up person. Material was 52-100, using a 12 in resinoid
wheel; and we did this on a hand operated precision O.D. grinder 10 x18 inch
between centers. Our last endeavor in 1998 was duplexing class 3 (C-3) standard
deep groove ball bearings still assembled to 0.000050 tolerance. The bearing
industry has been trying to do this inexpensively on ball bearings for 55
years. Some of the materials we had ground included: A286SS, 440C, 304SS,
17-4PH, titanium, Inconel®,
Alumel®,
etc.
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