Riser flange machined on a horizontal boring mill at Rockwell Precision.
"between land-based extraction and offshore is exotic materials." Equipment on the seafloor, he explained, has to withstand higher pressures. “To cut exotic materials, what you are looking for in a machine is one with a heavy, rigid box-way machine able to take difficult cuts,” Cates said. He believes a stable machine needs to deliver high torque. “For example, our 2000-mm ver- tical turret lathe [VTL] delivers 41,133 ft-lbs of torque [55,550 N•m].” Absolute specializes in both two-axis and three-axis VTLs—live tooling provides the third axis. He also noted that the bulk of what Absolute Machine Tools sells are three-axis machines, primarily for combined turning and drilling. Rockwell Precision uses YouJi vertical turret lathes sup- plied by Absolute Machine Tools. These are equipped with live tooling, needed for most offshore components, such as their YV1600 ATC+C, boasting a 1600-mm diameter table. “Live tooling means we can do the whole thing in one setup and not bottleneck a [separate] boring mill, to do the mill