Ten years ago, Saint-Gobain's Higgins Grinding Technology Center (HGTC) was started as a research facility largely focused on precision grinding applications using bonded abrasives. Today, after a decade of service, the HGTC is capable of supporting process research and applications development that includes all types of abrasive products, including bonded, coated and superabrasives, and all abrasive finishing processes, including grinding, lapping, polishing and chemo mechanical polishing (CMP). Since it opened, the 30,000-square-foot HGTC facility's goal has been to develop innovative grinding solutions through collaborative alliances with machine tool builders, coolant suppliers and other suppliers to the abrasives industry, along with its own grinding experts and that of the end users who use high-performance grinding processes in their production operations. Together with its sister facility, the Applications Engineering Center at Norderstedt, Germany, the HGTC has expanded into a significant research and system integration facility of Saint-Gobain's High Performance Materials (HPM) group. HPM focuses on plastics, ceramics, and crystals as well as abrasives technologies.

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