Product category:
CNC lathes
News Release from: Colchester-Harrison | Subject: Combi 4000 CNC lathe
Edited by the Manufacturingtalk Editorial
Team on 24 December 2001
CNC lathe turns out development
couplings
At Dixon Adflow a recently installed Colchester Lathe Combi 4000 for the initial development and production turning of a range of couplings, has become one of the busiest machines in the works.
At Dixon Adflow's Bamber Bridge factory in Lancashire, a recently installed Colchester Lathe Combi 4000 by northern distributor Oakland Machine Tools of Heckmondwike for the initial development and production turning of a new range of couplings, has become one of the busiest machine tools in the works The US-owned company set up its machining operations in Preston in 1995 with a Colchester Tornado 200
This article was originally published on Manufacturingtalk on 5 Jul 2001 at 8.00am (UK)
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The machines are often unmanned and produce batches of between 300 and 1,000 components.
So consequently, when the need arose for another lathe to produce the new Holedall coupling range for the oil industry and offshore rig supply hose applications, the Colchester Combi 4000 fitted the bill.
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Components for the new couplings are machined from up to 300mm diameter carbon steel or stainless steel tube with up to 30mm wall thickness in the raw material state which can end up with a minimum wall thickness of around 6mm.
While accuracies are not tight at + 0.12mm on diameter, stock removal is heavy for the repeat batched components which can range from 10 to several hundred at a time.
Michael Pendregaust, engineering director comments: "Holedall connectors are produced in diameters from 25mm to 300mm; however the most frequent requirement is to suit a hose of 100mm diameter and over.
Our existing manufacturing set-up was geared to produce larger volumes of smaller components from bar-fed material so we obviously needed a larger capacity turning machine.
A slant bed lathe would have been ideal but considerably more expensive and not the best investment during the product development phase." He follows on to say: "By opting for the Colchester Combi 4000 from Oakland we obtained everything that we needed in terms of physical capacity, power, ease of use, machining capability and at a reasonable cost.
Moreover, due to the CNC capability of the Combi, it has been an ideal machine for repeat batches and series production." Dixon-Adflow's parent company is Dixon Valve and Coupling Co., a privately owned conglomerate with headquarters in Maryland.
The organisation is one of the world's leading producers of hose couplings, selling into power stations, oil industry, pharmaceutical and food manufacturing applications.
The Bamber Bridge operation is both a stockholder for products produced overseas and a manufacturer of 'specials' and made-to-order items required for fast delivery.
Its new Holedall coupling is a specialist hose fitting developed for high flow rate type applications which means any constriction of the bore at the point of connection cannot be tolerated.
It comprises an external ferrule which fits over the hose end and a hose 'tail' which is pushed into the bore.
The hose tail may be assembled with a wide variety of customer-specified end terminations such as flanges and other types of connector.
Both the inside of the ferrule and the outside diameter of the hose tail have machined serrations.
When the connector is assembled onto the hose a hydraulic swaging tool is pulled through the hose tail, expanding it so that the hose is gripped between the serrations on the tail and ferrule.
The assembly is capable of withstanding test pressures of 10 to 2,500 psi and an important feature of the coupling is that the inside diameter of the assembly matches that of the hose.
"The Holedall system is applicable to a wide variety of hose diameter and wall thickness combinations so these became a vary large family of parts." Michael Pendregaust commented: "However there are many fundamental similarities between the part programs and new components can often be programmed as variants of an existing part.
These are largely written off-line and directly down-loaded to the Fanuc 210i-TA control on the Combi.
However, with the control containing its own on-board CAM system and choice of operating systems from using a simple digital readout and teach and repeat cycles through the electronic handwheels, this makes program prove-out and modifications very easy for the operator at the machine." The Combi 4000 has a swing of 554mm which is ideal for the Holedall range of couplings.
While larger diameter components are usually machined from thick walled tube, some of the smaller diameter parts are produced from billets.
This can save on material cost but when a billet is machined, a series of trepanning tools are mounted in the eight station Duplomatic disc turret.
The machine was also installed with a 400mm Pratt Burnerd chuck, a hydraulic tailstock, and a rear boring station.
In practice, use of tuned boring bars allows boring operations to be conducted with the tooling supported in the turret.
This simplifies set-up, while the 11kW spindle and three speed auto-select transmission with the added advantage of constant surface speed between 18 and 1,800 revs/min, ensures that optimum cutting speeds and high torque for metal removal, are always available.
Due to the thin wall of the finished components, workholding is critical and the company also invested in special enveloping chuck jaws and a variety of steadies to support the workpiece.
"The Colchester Combi has been very successful by helping us to develop a new product range which has all the indicators for being a success.
The machine has certainly proved capable of sustaining our early production requirements." And, as Michael Pendregaust concluded: "With demand for the Holedall system now becoming very strong, the decision to buy the Combi has proven to be right because it is able to bridge the gap from machining a single development component right into series production when it is able to maintain competitive turning cycle times.".
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