New product under development

Development of Epoxy Sponge Whetstone

In response to the official decision on the delivery of the "FY2009 Subsidy for Product Development at Small and Medium Monozukuri (Manufacturing) Companies (Development and Trial Production Support Project)," we launched the "Epoxy Sponge Whetstone Development Project" in December 2009.

Whetstones using epoxy resin as a binder, called epoxy whetstones, are currently available on the market. However, a spongy form of this type of whetstone has not yet been realized.

Whetstones using phenol resin as a binder are hard and fragile, often scratching the surface of relatively soft metals during grinding. This makes such whetstones unsuitable for use in final grinding processes. Although ordinary epoxy resin is mechanically tougher than phenol resin, the use of flexible epoxy resin as a binder lowers the whetstone's modulus of elasticity. Flexible epoxy resin is a liquid, and can be changed to a spongy form by foaming.

We aim to create an ideal whetstone: one that is scratch-free, clog-free, high in grinding accuracy, high in grinding efficiency, and cost-effective.

We expect that the epoxy sponge whetstone ("Eposponge whetstone" for short), once developed, will be widely used for mirror-surfacing processes in the gravure printing, electronics and optical lens industries.