Product category:
Vertical machining centres (VMC)
News Release from: 600 Centre | Subject: Fanuc Robodrill Alpha 14C VMC
Edited by the Manufacturingtalk Editorial
Team on 11 April 2003
VMCs replace turret millers, up
competitiveness
Three VMCs have cut production cycles that previously took hours on CNC turret mills to a matter of minutes and improved a manufacturer's competitiveness.
At Birmingham-based Tufnol, three Fanuc Robodrill Alpha 14C vertical machining centres from 600 Centre of Shepshed have cut production cycles that previously took hours on CNC turret mills to a matter of minutes In addition, consistency of production repeatability and accuracy have improved markedly which has translated into improved competitiveness, enabling Tufnol to quote for and win business that was previously outside its scope
This article was originally published on Manufacturingtalk on 22 May 2001 at 8.00am (UK)
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David Bedington, works manager for Tufnol's machining division, describes how the company produces a very wide range of plastics based components for a broad cross-section of manufacturing industry.
"Although we have operated CNC equipment for some time we were starting to fall behind in terms of speed and efficiency.
However, following a management buy-out in 2000 we have invested in CAD/CAM, modern CNC turning capacity and, most recently, the three Fanuc Robodrills which has had a significant effect on our manufacturing efficiency," he says.
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The Tufnol brand of materials is well known for properties which use either laminated papers or fabrics which are impregnated with a variety of resins to provide specific application properties.
Manufactured in a wide range of grades and formats they are capable of being machined and fabricated for a myriad of diverse purposes from brackets and plain bearings to gears and pump impellers.
The company operates on two levels; material supply and a part production service.
It will supply sheet, rod or tubular raw materials to manufacturers as well as offering engineered products and components.
"With sales split roughly between basic material and finished components, this means our machining division is a key part in our activities," explains David Bedington.
Customers include the aerospace industry, car manufacturers, defence contractors and Grand Prix teams as well as general industry.
The nature of the materials produced means that they are highly stable and capable of being machined to general tolerances within +/-0.05mm or tighter if required.
Bore sizes are easily held to +/-0.03mm.
Batch quantities may be as low as one for prototype development, or run into thousands on small parts but more typically quantities of 50 to 100 are supplied with a growing need for parts kitting, requiring delivery of made-up sets.
Keith Hill, the supervisor within the milling section of the factory commented: "Most of the milled components require a combination of pocketing, slot milling, profiling, drilling and tapping.
Prior to the Robodrills we mostly had to finish parts as additional operations where tapping or blending of radii was needed and of course this added to the lead-time.
This meant set-up time could be lengthy and it didn't help trying to run production work on machines more suited to toolroom applications." When the company set out to upgrade its facilities it had a clear idea of the issues it wanted to address, rather than the type of machine it required.
A Fanuc control was held to be desirable to maintain compatibility with recently acquired CNC lathes.
Beyond improved speed and flexibility, however, the company had no strong prejudices as to the type or source of vertical machining centre.
"We began by visiting a few exhibitions and suppliers," David Bedington explained.
"That helped us to develop a specification and led us to home in on this class of compact and quick cycling capability machining centres.
We went to the 600 Centre Productivity Partnerships exhibition and the demonstrations we saw on the Robodrill certainly put the machine in the frame." A shortlist of three machines, including the Robodrill, was then examined more closely.
At this point Keith Hill became involved, and Tufnol also conducted a machining trial on a real component.
"The performance advantages of the Fanuc really became clear when a component that had previously consumed three hours of machining time was completed in 15 minutes," he said.
He follows on to describe how aside from the machining performance he liked the solidity of the Fanuc Robodrill and its simple capability to develop part programs on the machine.
Keith Hill reported: "We produce a lot of single jobs that are easy to program manually at the machine and here the Fanuc CNC is ideal for that.
It also offered a more powerful 5.5kW spindle than the alternative machines and the 54 m/min rapid traverse was nearly double that of one of the others." The Robodrill was also more expensive than the other short listed machines.
However Tufnol took the view that the combination of the machine specification and performance with the back up provided by 600 Centre would prevail in the longer term.
David Bedington explains how initially they were going to order two machines.
"However we won a major contract and it then made sense to buy a package of three at the same time.
We bought two 'standard' 500mm stroke Robodrill Alpha 14iCes and a Robodrill Alpha 14iCL to have the advantage of a longer table stroke of 700 mm for our largest components.
All three machines are equipped with dust extraction." As Tufnol's production methods utilise jig plates made from its own material each machine is equipped with raised table platens.
The jig plates are located from dowels, which makes set-up of different components a reasonably fast procedure.
Tooling depends on the material being processed.
For instance, some Tufnol grades are quite abrasive and are best machined using poly-crystalline diamond tipped tooling while others are free cutting and can be easily machined with carbide.
Similarly, application of coolant is beneficial for some grades but not for others.
Keith Hill reports how the Robodrills are very stable and accurate.
"We were used to checking and continuously adjusting offsets on the old machines just to stay in tolerance.
On the Fanucs we only need to adjust offsets occasionally and that's on fairly complicated work.
On general production we have had cases where the machines have produced 3,000 components using the same tooling and have found no detectable shift in dimensions." On certain tasks the Fanuc machines have proved to be faster than Tufnol's CNC lathes.
Depending on the ratio of turning to second operation milling Tufnol's engineers have found it can be quicker to use circular interpolation milling cycles to replace turning operations.
Likewise, the speed and accuracy of the rigid tapping function and the 'quick extraction' tap cycle has supplanted second operation tapping on most jobs.
As David Bedington concluded: "We are obviously keen to transfer as much work as possible from our older CNC mills as we get an immediate quality and productivity gain.
In addition, having the Robodrills has allowed us to quote for more demanding work as we are now in a position to maintain tighter tolerances and shorter delivery schedules and are far and away more productive than before.".
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