Product category:
Machine spindles and spindle attachments
News Release from: ITC Tooling | Subject: Air Turbine Tooling
Edited by the Manufacturingtalk Editorial
Team on 07 November 2006
High speed attachment ups machining
reliability
At 12,000 rev/min, a user's high performance cutting tools continually broke in machining centres and were inconsistent, until a 40,000 rev/min air turbine spindle was attached.
To guarantee that it meets the lead times, exacting quality and surface finish requirements of its' world class customer base, Rimor in Denmead, Hampshire, UK, has employed Air Turbine Tooling from ITC Formed in 1979, Rimor manufactures high precision components and complete modular assemblies providing its customers with a complete package that includes prototyping, development, production and testing
This article was originally published on Manufacturingtalk on 16 Jan 2007 at 8.00am (UK)
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To compliment its array of machine tools, the Air Turbine can be attached to most of the Rimor machine tools to provide spindle speeds up to 40,000 rev/min.
The 110 plus employee private company provides its' services to a customer base that includes the major players in the subsea Oil and Gas, Motorsport including Formula 1, Aerospace, Defence and Semi conductor markets.
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Rimor has benefited immensely from the Air Turbine and it has enabled the ISO 9001 registered company to improve its productivity, surface finishes and reduce lead times.
With a customer base intent upon cost down programs from fast turnaround supply, the Air Turbine Tooling has been attached to the 12,000 rev/min spindle Bridgeport VMC vertical machining centers to increase the speeds of its cutting tools.
As Rimor chief engineer Steve Camburn commented: "Most of our machining centers have a maximum spindle speed of 12,000 rev/min".
"At this speed, our high performance cutting tools continually broke and were inconsistent in their performance." The Air Turbine supplied with a regulator and air cleaning system has been retrofitted to a jig that enables it to rapidly be attached to the Bridgeport and Mazak machining and turning centers at Rimor.
This rapid attachment enables almost any machine to have a 40,000 rev/min spindle speed capable of accommodating cutting tool shanks up to 6mm diameter.
"The Air Turbine is predominantly used for machining digitized surfaces.
The increased spindle speed not only gives us reliability with our cutting tools, it also allows us to machine at faster speeds and feeds.
Working faster with smaller depths of cut enables us to drastically reduce our production times," continued Camburn.
An example of enhanced productivity has recently been demonstrated on a bearing carrier component.
Using a 2mm ball nosed cutting tool to machine 16mm deep circular kidney slots, Rimor was completing a part with six slots in just over 3h.
Using the same cutting tool at enhanced speeds and feeds with the Air Turbine enabled Rimor to complete the heat treated steel part in less than 1h and 20min.
Not only is the productivity of vital importance, the stable and predictable life span of the cutting tools provides the company with confidence that it can manufacture parts without consistent monitoring of the machining process.
Camburn continued: "We use a number of ITC's Cyber Series carbide cutting tools - and these have worked extremely well with the Air Turbine".
"Our productivity has been improved, our downtime has been reduced and the surface finish of components has been improved considerably.
We frequently use the 3mm diameter ball nose Cyber series cutter from ITC.
Working at a 200m/min feed rate with a 21,000 rev/min spindle speed, the surface finish of our components is exceptional - a significant improvement over our previous processes.".
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