Spm Machine #340063

Many components like handle bars, drive shafts etc in bicycle, automobile industries, pump manufacturing industries etc need knurling operation on OD, for providing better grips of mating part. Knurling is normally done in a lathe or in a HMC. But these machines are not designed for taking the plunge load of knurling. We have designed & developed a Special Purpose machine which can mass produce knurled components are very high speeds, requiring less cycle time & highoutput.

Construction:

• On a heavily ribbed, fabricated & stress-relieved machine base, a Head Stock is mounted.


• Located in the head stock is the Spindle, rigidly supported by 2 pairs of heavy duty, matched pair angular contact bearings.


• Spindle, powered by a VFD controlled 3 HP motor, provides stepless spindle speeds from 300 RPM to 600 RPM in a stepless range.


• Mounted on the head stock spindle is the optionally offered 3 jaw self centering conventional or hydraulic chuck.


• On the other end of the base, Tail Stock is mounted. Tail stock has 2 different movements:-
  
  
  
  • Hydraulically operated to & fro movement of the tail stock spindle for holding the job between centers and
  
  
  • Motorized to & fro movement of the tail stock assembly to take care of varying lengths of the jobs.
  
  
  
  


• Located between the head stock and the tail stock is the Carriage, mounted on which is the specially designed HSS Knurling Wheel to produce knurled surface on a cylindrical job. Opposite to the knurling wheel, Teflon idle roller assembly counter-supports the job when receiving the plunge load of knurling and prevents the job from bending.


• Carriage moves between the head stock and tail stock with the help of a Servo Drive, in combination with HMI (HUMAN MACHINE INTERFACE) which offers 3 distinct advantages:
  
  
  
  • Selection & ensuring of positioning accuracy with unfailing repeatability is ensured by the servo drive.
  
  
  • Servo drive also takes the knurling wheel to the exactly required knurling length, wherever the knurling length required is more than the width of the knurling wheel.
  
  
  • Servo drive makes it possible to produce multiple knurled surfaces of different knurling widths, on different jobs of different dimensions at single or multiple locations. The touch screen enabled HMI facilitates for quick program selection for different jobs, on-machine program edit, insertion of new programs, quick editing of cutting parameters like feed, speed etc.
  
  
  
  


• Centralize Lubrication System provides lubrication to the sliding and rotating parts of the machine at regular intervals. Cutting oil is continuously being pumped to the machining zone from a separate reservoir, fitted with a pump

This is a Line Boring Machine built for a customer, using our side mounting standard 5 HP milling head and a slide unit, having 500 mm X axis traverse.The feed movement is through VFD driven motor & gear box, which provides stepless feed range from 10 mm to 300 mm per minute.MHCL-5, has stepless spindle speed range from 10 RPM to 1, 000 RPM in combination of the lever operated, 4 stepped spindle speeds. Using a long arbor, job resting fixture & a base, this machine can be used for line boring application.

MHCL-5, has stepless spindle speed range from 10 RPM to 1, 000 RPM in combination of the lever operated, 4 stepped spindle speeds. Using a long arbor, job resting fixture & a base, this machine can be used for line boring application.

• A twin station concept one station to bore and face the front end of the job, the other to bore and face the rear end of the job.


• Each station has 2 sets of compound slides with servo driven cross and longitudinal axes. One set of compound slide does facing while the other will be used to bore.


• Both the facing and boring slides will work simultaneously to reduce the cycle time.


• Slides made of male, heavy duty, extra rigid, case hardened guideway strips and female turcite lining.


• Many innovative design features for reducing the cost, without diluting the stock removal capabilities within the specified time.

• Manually load cast job onto left hand chuck & on the auto-cycle button.


• Job gets clamped automatically & head stock starts rotating


• Machining of the face & ID of the front end of the job takes place.


• While machining on LH station is going on, operator loads an ID machined job on RH station.


• On the auto-cycle button & rear side machining of the job takes place in the RH station.

Every 75 seconds, one rough turned component is achieved.

• The customer is now getting a rough turned component at the rate of 1 piece/75 seconds, compared to the earlier 1 piece/10 minutes. i.e. a cycle time reduction of 87.5%


• A comparatively less accurate, highly affordable, Stock Turning CNC SPM is expected to result in elimination of 8 high end, accurate, expensive CNC turning centers, which are hitherto used for rough turning operations.


• Reduction in man power 8 CNC operators along with 8 turning centers are now available for more gainful work.


• Increased output.


• After rough turning in our machine, finish turning is carried out on CNC tuning centers, thereby cutting down the whole cycle time from 1 piece/12 minutes to 1 piece/3.25 minutes. i.e. a cycle time reduction of around 73%.

This is a 3 axes milling SPM which can be used in a general purpose machine. It can be used as a portable, horizontal drilling, milling machine. The horizontal and cross axes traverse are through manual compound slide. The vertical axis for setting the depth of cut and also for feed is through guide rod assisted, hand wheel operated mechanism. All the 3 axes move in their respective linear direction through lead screw & box nut mechanism. Any/all the axes can be powered on request and at an extra price.

This particular equipment is mounted with our standard 10 HP milling head, MHR-10. Special milling head, including ram type milling heads with box type, self power ram, having powered longitudinal traverse of 1 mtrs or even more can be offered with the 3 axes linear movement.

Buffing Special Purpose Machine is essentially a tailor made machine to suite the customers requirement. This machine was made for one of our customers in India. The features and specs this machine was as follows:

This machine mills a taper on the connecting rods small end. The client used to do this machining operation on an VMC, which was a time consuming process. In order to reduce the time and deliver an output of one component every 15 seconds, we proposed a rotary table concept. Basic features and sequence of operation is given below:

FEATURES & SPECS:

• Rigid, stress relieved and fabricated structural.


• A rotary table of our own make will be mounted on the base.


• This rotary table will have 2 indexing positions at every 180.


• Four fixtures will mounted on the rotary table at every 90.


• Two fixtures will be designed for 1stsetup milling operation (1stside angle milling of a fresh component) and two fixtures will be designed for 2ndsetup milling operation (2ndside angle milling after the completion of 1stside angle milling).


• The 1stsetup and 2ndsetup fixtures will be mounted at every alternate positions, to come after one another, while indexing.


• The rotary table will be oriented in such a way that two fixtures (one fixture of 1stsetup and one fixture of 2ndsetup) will be facing the operator for 180 index of table.


• On the other end of the table, at the other two fixtures, two milling heads are mounted on a two axes servo driven slide system.


• One milling head will be used for milling 1stsetup and the other will be used for milling 2nd


• The two axes slide systems consists of a horizontal servo driven slide for feed, and a vertical slide for setting depth of cut.


• The machine will be provided with complete machine enclosure.


• The machine will be provided with a recirculating coolant system and integrated chip conveyor system.


• LM guides will be used for slideways.


• Machine will be provided with centralized lubrication system for sliding surfaces.


• Machine will be provided with touch panel HMI, for easy parameter setting of feed and positions.

Duplex Plunge End Facing SPM is used to face the axle housing and maintain length before friction welding process.

This machine has a fixture consisting of hydraulic toggle clamps to clamp the axle housing ends. Centralizing fixture to centralize the component and work supports.

One either sides of the fixture, 2 milling heads with ISO-50 taper driven by a helical gearbox with 20hp motor is mounted. The milling heads are mounted on hydraulic slides, which are used for rapid approach, feed and rapid retraction.

We offer custom-built Duplex Milling Special Purpose Machines to end face multiple components, both from the front and from the back simultaneously. Hydraulically operated automatic clamping system, with a well designed job holding fixture, facilitates multiple components to get clamped simultaneously and quickly. Two milling heads, one in the front and the other in the back, simultaneously perform end facing operations on both the faces of all the mounted components simultaneously in one rapid go. Job clamping, rapid approach of the spindle, machining, rapid homing, rapid de-clamping etc will the part of an efficient auto-cycle, delivered by the combination of limit switches and PLC. The total cycle time for duplex end facing the multiple components, is a few seconds. The machine is designed for high productivity at low cost, consistent accuracy and with least dependency on the operators skill.milling heads are already well known for reliability and ruggedness in thousands of Plano milling conversions all over India and abroad. Matched pair angular contact bearings, used for supporting the spindles of unit heads of milling SPMs, ensure a very high level of spindle accuracy and high spindle speeds.

• Used to outsource the job to a vendor.


• The vendor used hydro-copying attachment to make the tapers.


• The finish obtained was not good & buffing had to be done.


• The vendor was not able to cope up to the production requirement.


• The customer tried to turn on turning centre, but due to job not having centers, job clamping became difficult & each canned cycle would take around 20-30 minutes.

• Lathe type configuration.


• Heavily ribbed, rigid, fabricated & stress relieved base.


• Carriage slide with a stroke of 500 mm.


• The carriage mounted on the horizontal slide consists of cross slide having stroke of 150 mm. A tool post is mounted on the cross slide.


• Both the cross slide & horizontal slide is driven by servo motor through Ball screw & ball nut arrangement for multi axes interpolation and for infinitely variable feed ranges.


• Head stock mounted on LH of the base is driven by motor through timer belt and timer pulley arrangement routed through Vector VFD for stepless speed variation from 750 to 1500 RPM.


• A hydraulically actuated precision self centering 3 jaw chuck is mounted for easy job clamping.


• Tail stock consists of pair of roller & hydraulic cylinder, so that when hydraulic cylinder is actuated and pressed down on the job, automatic centering is observed.


• Appropriate supports provided to avoid bend on job during cutting


• Power-pack of our own make.


• Chip Conveyor to facilitate easy chip disposal.


• Coolant System for heat dissipation & fine surface finish.


• Completely enclosed guard to protect from chips and coolant splash.

• Load job onto the chuck and press auto cycle.


• The 3 jaw chuck clamps and head stock turns on.


• The single point cutting tool rapid traverse from home to cutting position.


• The required tapers are turned on the job by 2 axis interpolation


• Job unclamps.


• Unload job.

We designed and manufactured a Twin Station, 8 Axes, CNC Controlled, Stock Turning SPM for a large scale component manufacturing industry in Bangalore. This SPM is designed to take the load off 8 high end turnin

Problems faced by the customer:

• The cast job of the customer has a stock removal of around 8 mm in the bore and face.


• The customer cannot reduce the stock during casting stage, as the job profile is such that any reduction in stock at one point would eat up into the finished area at another point, leaving no option, but to retain huge, machining stock on all the walls of the components.


• On a CNC turning center, the cycle time required is 10 minutes for rough turning of 7 mm stock and the rest 1 mm would be finish-turned in a cycle time of 2 minutes. Total cycle time is about 12 minutes.


• It is noted that the turning centers is not suitable for heavy cuts beyond 3 mm which was leading to the increase in the cycle time.


• Customer approached us to manufacture a CNC turning SPM, which could cut 7-8 mm in one single go.

g centers.

• A twin station concept one station to bore and face the front end of the job, the other to bore and face the rear end of the job.


• Each station has 2 sets of compound slides with servo driven cross and longitudinal axes. One set of compound slide does facing while the other will be used to bore.


• Both the facing and boring slides will work simultaneously to reduce the cycle time.


• Slides made of male, heavy duty, extra rigid, case hardened guideway strips and female turcite lining.


• Many innovative design features for reducing the cost, without diluting the stock removal capabilities within the specified time.

• Manually load cast job onto left hand chuck & on the auto-cycle button.


• Job gets clamped automatically & head stock starts rotating


• Machining of the face & ID of the front end of the job takes place.


• While machining on LH station is going on, operator loads an ID machined job on RH station.


• On the auto-cycle button & rear side machining of the job takes place in the RH station.

Every 75 seconds, one rough turned component is achieved.

• The customer is now getting a rough turned component at the rate of 1 piece/75 seconds, compared to the earlier 1 piece/10 minutes. i.e. a cycle time reduction of 87.5%


• A comparatively less accurate, highly affordable, Stock Turning CNC SPM is expected to result in elimination of 8 high end, accurate, expensive CNC turning centers, which are hitherto used for rough turning operations.


• Reduction in man power 8 CNC operators along with 8 turning centers are now available for more gainful work.


• Increased output.


• After rough turning in our machine, finish turning is carried out on CNC tuning centers, thereby cutting down the whole cycle time from 1 piece/12 minutes to 1 piece/3.25 minutes. i.e. a cycle time reduction of around 73%.

This machine chamfers the bore on connecting rods small end. The client used to do this machining operation on an VMC, which was a time consuming process. In order to reduce the time and deliver an output of 4 component every 20 seconds, we proposed a pendulum type loading unloading concept. Basic features and sequence of operation is given below:

FEATURES & SPECS:

• Rigid, stress relieved and fabricated structural.


• Atop the base, two fixtures are mounted side by side along the length.


• Each fixture has hydraulic clamping and can hold 4 components at a time.


• Adjacent to these fixtures, a servo driven longitudinal slide is mounted with approximate slide stroke of 600mm.


• Atop this slide a chamfering head with servo driven vertical movement is mounted.


• The chamfering head will be mounted with a chamfer tool.


• The chamfering head, at start of each cycle, will be positioned at the center, in between the fixtures.


• The machine will be provided with a recirculating coolant system.


• The machine will be provided with complete machine enclosure.


• LM guides will be used for slideways.


• Machine will be provided with centralized lubrication system for sliding surfaces.


• Machine will be provided with touch panel HMI, for easy parameter setting of feed and positions.

SEQUENCE OF OPERATION:

1. Load the component onto one of the fixture and press auto-cycle.


2. The components at 1stfixture get clamped.


3. The longitudinal slide moves the unit head top the 1stcomponent of the 1stfixtures and vertical head plunges the chamfer head into the component to chamfer.


4. The chamfer head then retracts and moves to the next component and repeats the above steps for the rest of the component.


5. While chamfering is going on at the 1stfixture, the operator has to load components onto 2nd


6. Now after chamfering components at 1stfixture, the chamfer head returns home and stops inbetween two fixtures.


7. The operator has to press-autocycle.


8. Steps 2 to 5 is now repeated at 2ndfixture, while the operator unloads chamfered component and loads new component at 1st

Customers Initial Machining Process and problems faced:

• Used to outsource the job to a vendor.


• The vendor used hydro-copying attachment to make the tapers.


• The finish obtained was not good & buffing had to be done.


• The vendor was not able to cope up to the production requirement.


• The customer tried to turn on turning centre, but due to job not having centers, job clamping became difficult & each canned cycle would take around 20-30 minutes.

Features and Specs:

• Lathe type configuration.


• Heavily ribbed, rigid, fabricated & stress relieved base.


• Carriage slide with a stroke of 500 mm.


• The carriage mounted on the horizontal slide consists of cross slide having stroke of 150 mm. A tool post is mounted on the cross slide.


• Both the cross slide & horizontal slide is driven by servo motor through Ball screw & ball nut arrangement for multi axes interpolation and for infinitely variable feed ranges.


• Head stock mounted on LH of the base is driven by motor through timer belt and timer pulley arrangement routed through Vector VFD for stepless speed variation from 750 to 1500 RPM.


• A hydraulically actuated precision self centering 3 jaw chuck is mounted for easy job clamping.


• Tail stock consists of pair of roller & hydraulic cylinder, so that when hydraulic cylinder is actuated and pressed down on the job, automatic centering is observed.


• Appropriate supports provided to avoid bend on job during cutting


• Power-pack of our own make.


• Chip Conveyor to facilitate easy chip disposal.


• Coolant System for heat dissipation & fine surface finish.


• Completely enclosed guard to protect from chips and coolant splash.

Sequence of Operation:

• Load job onto the chuck and press auto cycle.


• The 3 jaw chuck clamps and head stock turns on.


• The single point cutting tool rapid traverse from home to cutting position.


• The required tapers are turned on the job by 2 axis interpolation


• Job unclamps.


• Unload job.


• For describing the sequence of operation, the fixtures will be named as Fixture-1, Fixture-2, Fixture-3 & Fixture-4, in clockwise direction.


• Fixture-1 and Fixture-3 are 1stsetup angle milling fixtures.


• Whereas Fixture-2 and Fixture-4 are 2ndsetup angle milling fixtures.


• At the start of the cycle, Fixture-1 & Fixture-2 will be facing the operator. Fixture-3 & Fixture-4 will be under the milling heads.


• The operator has to load a fresh component on the Fixture-1 and transfer the component (1stside angle milled) from Fixture-1 to Fixture-2, for 2ndsetup operation.


• When auto-cycle button is pressed, the rotary table, indexes by 180.


• Now Fixture-1 comes under one milling head and Fixture-2 comes under the other milling head, while Fixture-3 and Fixture-4 face the operator.


• Now the vertical slides of both the milling head, position the milling head for the required depth of cut. Horizontal slides move the milling heads at the set feed to mill the components (1stsetup and 2ndsetup) simultaneously.


• Now, while milling is going on at Fixture-1 and Fixture-2, the operator, has to unload the component from Fixture-4(both sides milled), transfer the component from Fixture-3 (Single side milled) to Fixture-4 and load a fresh job onto Fixture-3.


• After milling, the slides return to home.


• Repeat the cycle.

A rotary milling SPM used to mill ingates was developed for a foundry based company as a solution for the following problem:

• Inagates of castings had to be removed before machining on VTLs.


• They were previously being removed by hand grinding.


• This was a laborious process requiring a lot of man power.


• There was a lot of dust, which was hazardous and of no use.

Key points of the solution offered:

• The ingates are milling within minutes compared to the previous numerous man hours spent to hand grinding.


• Better tool life of the final machining as ingates are removed uniformly.


• Milling chips are generated which can be used again in castings. Earlier these becoming powdered chips which could not be collected or used.

Features and Specs:

• Rigid, heavily ribbed, stress relieved, cast iron structure for slides. Fabricated structure for base.


• Atop the base, a vertical column is mounted with vertical slide.


• Both the slides are made of LM guides and blocks.


• Atop the slide, a 5 HP all geared milling head is mounted.


• The cross slide is driven by ballscrewscrew, coupled to inline servo reducer and servo motor.


• The machine also has a rotary table mounted in front. The drive is motorized and routed through servo motor with variation between 0-15 RPM

SPMs or Special Purpose Machines offer tremendous scope for high volume production at low investment and at low cost of production when compared to CNC machines. SPM, Special Purpose Machines is a high productivity machine, with specially designed tooling and fixture, dedicated for mass producing the same component day in and day out. A judicious combination of limit switches, sensors, logic controls, automatic job clamping etc is the essence of a SPM. A well conceived Special Purpose Machine finds ways and means to utilize the man and machine to the optimum. We offer low cost dedicated SPMs for mass production of small components of 2 & 4 wheelers, tractors, trucks, engines etc. Typical components are rear wheel flange, shifter cam, shifter fork, clutch sleeve etc. OUR SPMs ARE SUITABLE FOR MASS PRODUCTION OF COMPONENTS WHICH INVOLVE OPERATIONS LIKE TURNING, BORING, FACING, DRILLING, REAMING, TAPING, CHAMFERING ETC. Our Special Purpose Machines work with 4 to 8 stations, depending upon job requirements. Most of the Special Purpose Machine concept is standardized which enables very fast delivery of the machine. Please send us your enquiry with the following details for enabling us to send you our offer:

(a) Job drg

(b) Job material

(c) Operations to be carried out on the job to be clearly indicated in the drg

(d) Desired rate of production

(e) Precondition of the job as presented to the machine

Roller planishing is a simple, inexpensive and skill-free operation. When the sheet metal edges are fed through two rollers, a smooth & bulge-free surface is created. It relieves the stresses and the welded joints will be stronger. Welding after planishing ensures almost zero leakage from the joints.The bottom roller is a driven roller and receives the drive from a VFD controlled drive unit. The drive unit consists of a motor and a worm reduction gear box. The step-less rotational speed of the roller is from 1 RPM to 20 RPM. The driven roller is connected to the drive unit through a spindle, which is rigidly supported by a pair of pre-loaded taper roller bearings. The top roller is an idle roller, having 50 mm adjustable up and down stroke through a 150 mm pneumatic cylinder (5 bar 900 kg). The up and down arm movement is guided through hardened LM guide ways. The top drive roller is also supported by a separate spindle unit and angular contact bearings. Both the drive and driven rollers are detachable and hardened & ground.

When the foot operated switch is pressed, the timer controlled driven roller rotation starts; simultaneously the top roller gets pushed down towards the driven roller. The edge of the job is fed through the rollers, following the required job contours. On completing the planishing operation, the foot switch is released; the top roller retracts to the home position and the driven roller stops rotating.

An automatic lubrication system lubricates the sliding and rotating parts of the machine at the regular intervals. A digital display is provided in the console which indicates the RPM of the drive roller. All other operational controls are provided in the console.

This multi station pendulum type of milling SPM is another effort by us to utilize the man and the machine to the optimum. What otherwise would have been possible for at least 2 SPMs (each SPM with 2 spindle units) and two different operators, is made possible by this single Pendulum Milling SPM in terms of productivity. The Pendulum SPM consists of totally 3 spindle units and two job holding fixtures at LH & RH stations. When the machining is going on at both the ends of the same component simultaneously in LH station, another job is being loaded in the RH station. This SPM has a capacity of producing 150 finished components per hour. For this kind of output, 3 machining centers would have been needed, which means the additional space, power & operator for 2 more machines.

This is a Side Frame Milling SPM. The SPM has totally 9 axes and 3 spindle units, thus providing a unique capability to machine the different segments of the same component simultaneously in the same setting. It avoids machining the same component in multiple setting and considerably saves on time and boosts productivity and accuracy.