Think Product Life Cycle, Reliability, Productivity “The fi rst thing that you have to look at is the chassis
structure, because that’s the bones of the machine,” said David Ward, HMC product manager, Makino Inc. (Mason, OH). “The bed casting and column casting are the foundation of machine reliability and accuracy. Makino insists that machines are installed with three point leveling to ensure straightness and squareness. We also look at long-term life cycle costs in our design considerations, including center trough coolant and chip management systems and solid one-piece way covers to avoid any unplanned downtime for maintenance.” Makino offers a number of options for automating HMCs, including a pallet magazine of seven pallets placed out front of the machine, which Ward calls “an island of production.” It gives the user the ability to set up seven different tombstones while the machine is running, virtu- ally eliminating machine downtime due to setups. Makino’s MMC2 linear pallet systems can be expanded to include as many as 15 machines and offer the unique MAS-A5 control system to fl exibly prioritize and monitor produc- tion schedules. Another popular type of automation utilizes pedestal-style robots, gantries or six-axis robots on rail. There is more to automation than simply addding a robot. This type of automa- tion must be supported by intelligent machine and system design. “Because you won’t have an operator always in attendance, every step of the process has to be fully automated,” said Ward, “including chip removal, coolant systems that automatically fl ush the fi xtures to get all the chips off, and even a front door opening with access large enough for a robot gripper to access the tombstone for part loading and unloading.” At IMTS, Makino will be introducing the second-generation of its popular four-axis a51nx 400-mm, 40-taper HMC; a61nx 500-mm, 40-taper HMC; and a71nx 500-mm, 50-taper HMC. “There’s a new system that will be standard on all three machines called Vision Broken Tool Sensing [BTS] ,” said Ward. “It’s a camera system that resides inside the tool change maga-
zine. Every time the tool moves out of the spindle to the toolchanger ready station, the tool will be illuminated and a picture is taken. The silhouette image of the single-point tools—drills, taps, and reamers—can be evaluated almost instantaneously to confi rm that it sucessfully completed the previous operation and is ready for the next set of parts.” The three new machines have direct-drive rotary table B axes that are equipped with Makino’s new Inertia Active Control which can sense how hard the table is working by rotating the pallet in a noncut condition. “By determin- ing how hard the motor is working, we can estimate the inertia and weight of that pallet. With this information we can optimize the acceleration/deceleration rates to speed
up or slow down the rapid motion of the B-axis rotation and Z-axis positioning, saving as much as 3.1% cycle time by eliminating noncut time positioning time,” said Ward
Umill 1800 is a fi ve-axis milling center in a bridge design with moving table and crossbeam permitting loading from the top or the front of the machine for mold makers, aerospace, automotive, and precision engineering users.
Control Sophistication Leads to Connectivity “The technology that we are focusing on is control and software related, especially the connectivity that makes
July 2016 |
AdvancedManufacturing.org 53
Photo courtesy EMCO Group
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