Motors & Drives Information

NEW DEVELOPMENTS IN MANUFACTURING AND TECHNOLOGY

One way to beat the competition for mold and die production is to collapse the time it takes to make them. For instance, instead of producing a die in forty days from concept to finished product, do it in ten days..

That's just the scheme that Scott Walker, president of Mitsui Seiki USA Inc. (Franklin Lakes, NJ) says they developed with their new VL30 Vertical Mold Center. According to Walker, the VL30 is the first five-axis linear motor machining center that can make molds faster, more accurately, and with better surface finishes than EDM and conventional vertical spindle milling machines-- the typical processes for machining molds. A demonstration mold part machined at IMTS would take up to 40 days to produce from concept through finished product. With the VL30, machining time was reduced from 30 hr of conventional processing to 2 hr.

"One of the drivers in the mold industry is the need for quicker delivery of high-accuracy mold components," says Walker. "EDM is a very slow process costing several weeks in delivery time. Our machine eliminates EDM processing and machines hard dies complete, reducing moldmaking from weeks to days. This allows moldmakers to respond to their customers' delivery needs quickly."

The VL30 is a solution for mold and die manufacturers to increase productivity and reduce the high cost of hand-polishing and fitting mold inserts. Further, it uses high-thrust, high-efficiency linear motor drives for all axes, providing high-- response movement without backlash and dramatically increases acceleration and deceleration rates. It provides excellent speed and motion control when performing high-speed point milling in typical mold work and other multiaxis contouring applications. The VL30 delivers a cutting feed rate up to 1574 ipm (40 m/min) with a quick, 1G acceleration/deceleration rate.

Specifications include 7.9 x 11.8 x 7.9" (200.6 x 300 x 200.6-mm) X, Y, Z axes envelope, an 11.8 x 15.8" (300 x 401-mm) table size and a compact 47 x 140" (1.2 x 3.6-m) footprint.

On the VL30, the 5.5-hp (4.10-- kW) high-speed spindle accepts HSK25 tooling and provides spindle speeds up to 50,000 rpm for precise roughing and fine finishing of small molds and mold components. An integrated toolchanger holds as many as 12 tools. The machine can also be used in precision grinding applications.

# posted by Medical Information : 3:59 AM