Domestic High-End Grinding Wheel Joint R&D Project

Over two years, RailwayCare partnered with a major Chinese railway maintenance group to successfully develop a high-performance, wear-resistant, and eco-friendly super-hard grinding wheel, achieving import substitution and significantly reducing track grinding maintenance costs.

From 2021 to 2023, through deep collaboration, RailwayCare and its industry partner focused on solving the "bottleneck" problem of long-term dependence on imported high-end grinding wheels. The project successfully developed a core material system based on a novel resin bond, novel pore-forming thermally conductive composite aerogel, and super-hard abrasive grains, creating a domestic solution that matches the performance of top international brands while offering better durability, environmental benefits, and significantly lower cost.

In the field of railway rail grinding, high-end super-hard grinding wheels were long monopolized by a few foreign brands. This led not only to high procurement costs and long, uncertain supply cycles but also constrained domestic maintenance departments' cost control and independent technological upgrade capabilities. Developing a domestic wheel that could substitute imports with excellent performance and economic benefits became an urgent industry need.

The project's success is rooted in original breakthroughs at the core material level. The R&D team abandoned simple imitation, starting from fundamental material science to construct a new grinding wheel composition system.

Novel Resin Bond: Compared to traditional bonds, it provides stronger grain retention, allowing abrasive grains to fully perform before dulling rather than premature shedding—key to enhanced durability.

The success of this project goes far beyond the creation of an excellent product. It proves that through deep industry-academia-research cooperation, China is fully capable of achieving independent innovation and surpassing in the field of high-end railway consumables.