Question on Surface Grinder Incremental Downfeed

[PhoenixMetal]

Does anybody have experience with automatic or semi-automatic surface grinders?

I am in the market for a used machine and I am trying to determine how the "incremental downfeed" feature works. Specifically, can the operator specify how much total material to remove and then the machine just increments down to the pre-specified level (or completes a preselected number of passes), or will the machine essentially continually remove more and more material until the operator manually stops it? The controls on these machines seem very simple so I don't see how exactly the total amount of material to remove would be set...

I posted a similar question in the toolgrinding subforum but received no responses...

[Andre' B]

The one I run had a ratchet wheel on the down feed. It was activated by a little cylinder, you could adjust the length of the stroke with some threaded stops.
I believe the cylinder was activated by the pressure pulses which happened when the table reversed direction.

Vary simple but if it got dirty and started sticking it would not feed for a number of strokes and then may drop 0.005" which could cause bad things to happen.