Southwestern Industries, Inc. has designed the Trak TRL 1540V with the ProtoTrak VL CNC to keep the machinist in control. For machining tapers and threading, the lathe can be used manually with CNC assist. It can also machine complete part programs with an optional tool indexer for light production jobs. Via a customized “Traking” feature, the operator can control the CNC run cycle by cranking the handwheel.

As a member of the ProtoTrak family of controls, the VL CNC incorporates modern PC features such as networking, color graphics, spreadsheet programming editing and others.

Federal Mogul’s Maryville, Missouri, facility has recently installed a new Haas SL20 APL CNC lathe with a robotic gantry loader.

Federal Mogul’s Maryville crew of 215 employees work in a 150,000-sq.-ft. facility producing aftermarket automotive chassis products. The plant handles forging, machining and fabrication. The company’s machining area has a large amount of machining equipment.

The new Haas cell, the plant’s third Haas, was needed to improve the efficiency and quality of producing parts for military vehicles. It features 5-axis operation with a capacity of 10 tools.We purchased the SL20 to meet our customer’s required production schedule,” stated Ryan Hargrave, manufacturing engineer for the Maryville facility. “We have been pleased with our other Haas equipment and their service. This one is also performing well. With the robotic loader, our operator can now complete the final assembly while the cell is running.”

The largest machine tool builder in the United States, Haas Automation manufactures a full line of CNC vertical and horizontal machining centers, CNC lathes, rotary tables and 5C indexers.

Offered in 20 and 30 metric-ton models, the Verona Series of CNC thick turret tooling-style punch presses from Strippit/LVD (Akron, NY) provide a large turret capacity, a mix of stations, and large feed clearance.

The machines punch materials up to 0.250″ (6.4-mm) thick with a maximum hit rate of 1000 hpm at 0.04″ (1mm) pitch. Combining heavy sheet carrying capacity with accurate motion control, the positioning system produces a finished part accuracy of ±0.004″ (0.10 mm) with a repeatability of ±0.002″ (0.05 mm) over the entire table.

These presses handle workpieces as large as 60 × 98.4″ (1524 × 2500 mm) depending on model. Larger workpieces are handled with clamp repositioning. Smart Clamp, a standard feature, automatically determines exact clamp locations to provide the smallest possible no-punch zone.

An advanced servohydraulic press drive and interactive software optimize high-speed press operation while reducing noise and shock. Fully programmable stroke profiles and the patented Smart Stroke feature maximize punching performance and provide flexibility for punching and forming applications. This capability automatically optimizes the punch cycle by determining the hover height based on material thickness and distance between holes, reportedly maximizing productivity without operator or programmer intervention

With 8-station drum turret on each slide, Kitako HS4200i CNC Lathe offers x-axis gantry loading feed rates of 6,700 ipm. Unit features 4,500 rpm maximum spindle speed (5,000 rpm optional), rapid traverse rates, carrier indexing time of 1.5 sec, and 0.3 sec turret indexing per station. It offers variety of part processing methods and features 4-spindle technology to provide seamless cycling of work from loading zone to machining zone and back.

Schaumburg, IL - (February 23, 2007) Kitako has added another new generation, four-spindle CNC lathe to its line - the HS4200i with ultra high-speed automated gantry loader. Available from SB Machine Tools, the Kitako HS4200i CNC Lathe boasts x-axis gantry loading feed rates of 6,700 ipm. Combined, the HS4200i’s four-spindle operation and gantry loading capability accomplish smooth, unattended operation with no idle time for part loading/unloading. Extremely fast rapid traverse rates, along with carrier indexing time of 1.5 seconds, 0.3 second turret indexing per station provide a quantum jump in productivity.

Kitako’s unique four-spindle technology provides a seamless cycling of work from the loading zone to the machining zone and back again. Operating much like a pallet changer on a machining center, parts are transitioned in and out of the machining zone in as little as .8 seconds each. The HS4200i’s four spindles are mounted in a horizontal, square pattern in a large carrier drum. The drum’s positioning accuracy is ensured by a large diameter, precision-toothed, curvic coupling. Spindles are generally partnered as pairs so as the carrier is indexed 180 degrees; two spindles rotate to the machining area as two spindles move out for loading and unloading. The two spindles in the machining zone along with the respective slides and turrets work simultaneously as well as independently.

Emuge Corporation, a manufacturer of taps, thread mills, end mills, other cutting tools and precision workholding products, will hold an open house on May 10th and 11th, 2006 to celebrate the opening of its new technology center and manufacturing facility at 1800 Century Drive, West Boylston, Massachusetts, 01583. The center also serves as the company’s NorthAmerican headquarters.

Attendees at the open house can tour the 21,000-square-foot technology center, see the manufacturing area, view presentations and watch machining demonstrations on a new Hermle CNC five-axis machining center. Visitors can also meet with Emuge applications experts and engineers from the company’s global headquarters to discuss production needs. Lunch, refreshments, entertainment, special prizes and giveaways will also be available. Hours are 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. both days.

The company has released version 5.1 of its MachineWorks CNC simulation and verification technology. One of this version’s major developments is feature based picking across all the software’s geometric engines. Feature based picking enables CAM packages to accurately report the coordinate of a point on the actual cut surface rather than the faceted representation of the cut surface. The surface normal and the surface type (plane, cylinder, sphere) are also given.

Another improvement lies in the visualization of results from a target part comparison. Version 5.1 now features an option whereby unmachined areas can be ignored.

The software’s handling capabilities are said to protect applications from problems experienced when making calls to the software’s libraries.

The software now returns full details of the faces involved, including the point of self Intersection, the plane equation of the face, the number of vertices in the face loop and the vertex position in the face loop.

Enhancements specific to the Visicut Machine-Works geometric engine include enhanced support of complex tool shapes. Previous restrictions on the definition of 2D tool profiles have been removed so that the profile can be non monotonic in Y. This allows tools with concave ends to be properly simulated in plunging operations, whereby an ‘island’ of material remains. Closed profiles (toroidal tools) are now also supported.

Ray-traced target part comparison now supports transparency improving the visualization of gouges or areas of rest material. Additionally, the performance of ray-traced target part comparison has been improved, particularly when large stock models are used.

Wire EDM support has been enhanced to support the simulation of different XY/UV and XY’/UV’ planes.

Enhancements specific to the Rapidcut Machine Works geometric engine include the fact that holders can now be attached and detached from selected tools at any time. This removes the previous restriction that the bolder must be attached before the tool is positioned.

Target part comparison has been enhanced such that the results can be filtered so that false gouges or undercuts are not displayed.

Enhancements specific to the Pixelcut Machine Works geometric engine include performance gains in speed and memory usage, particularly when using complex solids.

Nearly every aircraft is prone to tiny cracks that begin at holes used to insert fasteners and that, if not addressed, can eventually migrate from one hole to the next and cause structural failures.

Split sleeve cold expansion, from Fatigue Technology (Seattle, Washington) is a process for increasing the fatigue life of holes in metal structures. The process radically expands a hole, creates a zone of residual compressive stresses around the hole and protects it from the effects of cyclic stresses. This is done using a tapered mandrel fitted with a lubricated sleeve and drawing the mandrel/sleeve combination through the hole using a hydraulic puller.

Most of the Fatigue Technology’s production consists of cylindrical parts, so the company has focused on obtaining the latest turning technology from around the world. It has five nine-axis Index G3000 mill-turn centers with dual spindles, dual turrets, a milling head and a rotary axis on each spindle that precisely locates a milled workpiece. The company also has two Star six- and seven-axis lathes with a sliding headstock that feeds the work through the machine to produce very long parts. It has many other conventional four-axis and two-axis turning centers.

This advanced complement of metalworking machinery provides the potential for high levels of productivity and accuracy, but it also creates programming challenges. Controlling all of those axes is a major task, but optimizing the complex capabilities of these machines and simplifying the process of accessing their capabilities is even more difficult.

The company also faces extremely tight time constraints. For example, Fatigue Technology’s contract with Boeing specifies that 80 percent of jobs must be completed within 24 hours of the time the order is received.

To meet these challenges, Bob Renfrow, manufacturing manager at Fatigue Technology, selected Esprit CAM from DP Technology (Camarillo, California) as the company’s CNC programming software.

The programming process begins when the design engineer sends an approved solid model in the Parasolid format. The CNC programmer defines the boundaries of the finished part and selects which operations will be performed while the part is held in the front and back spindles, making it possible to perform all machining operations in a single setup. The program is then automatically transferred from one spindle to the other. Operations are also divided between turrets, so that if 1 inch of metal needs to be removed, the two turrets are placed close to each other. They split the cut up so it can be performed in half the time that would be required by a single turret machine. The CAM system can control spindle speed in either constant rpm or constant sfm mode.

“Esprit will automatically determine the best way to perform the individual operations based on the characteristics of the tool,” Mr. Renfrow says. “Then it will calculate the cycle times for each operation and display them in a bar chart. The programmer can then add ‘Sync’ and ‘Wait’ codes to synchronize the machining operations, and the bar chart immediately displays the updated cycle times. The programmer can also drag and drop operations from one turret or spindle to another and click on the appropriate place in the chart to view the actual G-codes for a specific operation and make edits on the fly.

“When the programmer feels that the program is ready, he produces a part on the computer and watches as the CAM software simulates every machine movement including tailstock operations, bar feeds and part exchanges. Finally, he zooms in on a computer image of the actual geometry that will be produced by the program in order to be sure it will meet the customer’s requirements. The programmer can see exactly where he has missed undercuts and dimensions and can go back to make the necessary corrections.”

Fatigue Technology programmers also take advantage of Esprit’s tooling system, which uses ANSI/ISO standard coding to simplify the process of defining cutting tools. These standard tools, along with custom tools created by the company’s programmers, can be selected and inserted into a program. The correct inserts, holders and turrets are shown during the machining simulation and appear on a setup sheet that is automatically produced with each program. The program, along with the setup sheet, is released to the shop floor electronically.

Mr. Renfrow has gone one step further to speed programming of families of parts that are produced on a regular basis. He writes a macro that defines the basic operations used to produce the part and that accepts the variables that define the final dimensions of the part from a SQL database. The macro is carefully optimized and tuned to minimize cycle times and ensure that everything runs correctly. Programmers need only enter the actual dimensions of the part into a spreadsheet in order to generate a new program in a matter of a minute or two.

“Using these methods, we can produce very complicated CNC programs in a very short period of time, then verify them on the computer to make sure they are correct,” Mr. Renfrow says. “Everything is then delivered electronically to the operator on the shop floor so that in a matter of a few hours, we can go from design drawings to cutting chips.

The digital-featured Hawk TC-300 CNC turning center has a through-hole barstock capacity of 3.5″ (90 mm), maximum turning swing of 26.8″ (680 mm), turning diameter of 16.6″ (421 mm) and turning length of 39.9″ (1,016 mm).

The machine is equipped with a hydraulically actuated 12″ (300mm) chuck powered by a single-range, gearless spindle drive. The standard, high torque, 3,000 rpm spindle drive motor delivers a full 60 MTDR hp (45 kW).

According to the company, this turning center’s duty-rated spindle permits sustained productivity in hard metals and with high cutting loads.

The turning center’s 45-degree, cast iron slant-bed is said to provide rigidity, vibration damping and chip removal efficiency.

Standard maintenance-free linear guideways are said to enable faster processing by reducing sliding friction to 1/50th of that of conventional guideways. Advanced digital scale feedback-standard on the X axis delivers day-to-day part consistency with repeatability of [+ or -]0.00004″ ([+ or -]1 micron).

The GE Fanuc 21i-TA CNC is standard. This control is compatible with prior and current generation Fanuc technologies. It features machine-to-machine and machine-to-PC communications. Service and support are provided.

Every so often, I like to present a few Web sites I’ve come across that are of special interest to CNC users. While some of the Web sites I mention have products to sell, they also have free information about CNC.

It’s getting easier and easier to find CNC-related Web sites. A search in Google (or any other search engine) for “CNC,”, “CNC training,” “CNC Programming,” “Parametric programming” or just about any CNC-related topic will render countless results. Here are a few of my favorites.

The Virtual Machine Shop (gatecity.ampcenter.org): Funded by the U.S. Department Of Labor, this learning site has great animated articles about many facets of manufacturing, including CNC. You’ll need a fast connection (DSL or faster) to view the animated articles. Current major categories include milling machines, engine lathes, other machines and manufacturing processes, CNC/CAM, measurement, and machine shop processes. There are currently about 40 active articles, but according to the site, this will eventually grow to more than 180.

* techspex online (www.techspex.com): This comprehensive machine tool database (the Web site claims more than 7,000 models provides specifications for machine tools built by hundreds of machine tool manufacturers. Nicely categorized by machine type, this database should be one of the first places a new machine buyer goes to compare key features and specifications. In addition to machine tools, other main categories include tooling and accessories, software, controls, inspection, and machinery dealers. While you must register to get in, this service is free to CNC users.

The Beijing Organizing Committee for the Games of XXIX Olympiad selected China Mobile Communications Group Corporation and China Network Communications Group Corporation (CNC) as its mobile communications service partner and fixed telecommunications partner.

According to the agreement, China Mobile will provide a sophisticated mobile communications networks and services to the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games, the Beijing 2008 Paralympic Games, BOCOG, the Chinese Olympic Committee as well as the Chinese delegations to the 2006 Winter Olympic Games in Turin, Italy and 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing. - (World IT Report.com)