Product category:
Vertical machining centres (VMC)
News Release from: Yuasa Warwick Machinery | Subject: Kira HPC30Vb twin-pallet machining centre
Edited by the Manufacturingtalk Editorial
Team on 25 March 2003
Minimising non-cutting times hold down
costs
A machining centre's ability to minimise non-cutting times and hence maximise productivity, helped to keep down unit manufacturing cost and allow competitive subcontract prices.
Starter motor and alternator producer, Denso Manufacturing Midlands, Birmingham, has begun it to diversify into subcontract work for other suppliers to the automotive industry The first such contract commenced in August last year (2002) and necessitated the installation of a high speed machining centre from Kira, Japan, through UK agent, Yuasa Warwick Machinery
This article was originally published on Manufacturingtalk on 31 May 2001 at 8.00am (UK)
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The requirement is for 200,000 aluminium components per year, which is completed on the manually loaded and unloaded, twin-pallet Kira HPC30Vb over two shifts, five days a week.
Consequently there is extra capacity for further work on the machine.
However, as the company's production engineering manager points out, additional equipment would be purchased for new work if the quantities and length of contract warrant it.
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A compact five-axis machining centre, the Ohtori Kiko OSU-545, suited to machining highly complex components has been introduced by Yuasa Warwick Machinery.
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The main reason for Denso choosing the BT30 taper Kira machine is its ability to minimise non-cutting times and hence maximise productivity, helping to keep down unit manufacturing cost and allowing competitive subcontract prices to be quoted.
Contributing to the machine's high work rate is an impressive specification that includes rapid traverse in all axes of 56m/min, 0.7 second tool-to-tool exchange from the 20-station disc-type tool change unit, spindle acceleration to 15,000 rpm in 0.7 second, and pallet change in 1.7 seconds.
Installed in August 2002, the machine was immediately into full production of the automotive component from sawn aluminium billet.
At the start of a shift, three blanks are automatically clamped in a six-position hydraulic fixture on one pallet.
The door closes automatically, the pallet swings into the machining area and the first side of the blanks is machined.
During this time, a new set of three blanks is fixtured on the other pallet.
After a further pallet change, the three new blanks are machined while the others are inverted by the operator and fixtured in the three free adjacent stations ready for similar operations to be carried out on the other side.
Blanks replace the components that have just been removed.
Another pallet change sees the front of the blanks and the reverse of the inverted components being machined.
A component comes off the Kira every 50 seconds.
Operations on either side are balanced and involve the use of two stepped form drills for roughing, four polycrystalline diamond (PCD) tools for finishing, and two conventional drills for producing straight through-holes.
Tolerances are fairly open at around +/-0.1mm, but there is a demanding drawing tolerance of 12.5 Rmax surface finish on one of the stepped diameters that forms a sealing face for an O-ring.
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