No Peril at Merrill

The two RT 1600 boring mills have consistently cut cycle times, reduced setups, and made it easier to achieve specified part accuracies. They have 155 mm (6 in), four-speed spindles with up to 56 kW (75 hp) of power and 7695 Nm (5676 ft-lb) of torque. As an example of reduced cycle times and setups, Yackel cites an aluminum fabrication that had previously run on one of the shop’s retrofitted boring mills.

The new mills cut cycle time 34 percent, from 22 hours to 14.5 hours and eliminated a setup. For another customer ordering fabricating machine columns one at a time, the shop used the boring mills to cut cycle time 16 percent, eliminate a setup and easily hit the required squareness of 0.0004 in, which had been a problem with the previous machine.

The performance and increased throughput realized with the RT 1600 led the company to once again turn to MAG to meet a need for powerful, multi-tasking, vertical turning center capacity for customers in the wind and oil industries, adding a VTC 2000 and VTC 1600 in 2008 and 2009, respectively.

Merrill purchased the machines with optional live spindle and live right angle heads to permit multi-functional processing with milling, drilling, tapping and other operations on three surfaces of the part, all in the same fixturing. A full contouring C-axis enables drilling or milling of features anywhere on the workpiece with contouring-positioning by the 360,000 position table. The live spindle and live right angle head deliver 40 hp each. “Originally, we weren’t sure we would need a spindle with that much horsepower,” remarked Yackel. “Now I wouldn’t buy another machine without it.”

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In May 2009, as work in wind energy continued to increase, Merrill added an HMC 1250 horizontal machining center with a 110 mm live spindle that was immediately put to work on large turbine component parts. The HMC 1250 Series is engineered for high-precision, high-productivity, large-part machining with 1250 mm x 1600 mm pallets and a maximum 3000 mm (118 in) work zone swing range, 2050 mm (81 in) work height capacity and 7000 kg (15,400 lb) work load.

A standard 360,000 position contouring table enables precision 4-axis machining of a variety of part geometries. The HMC 1250 features six spindle options, including two sizes of live spindles (110 mm or 130 mm), high speed (24,000 rpm), high-torque (2600 Nm/1918 ft-lb) and a new 6000 rpm tilt spindle.

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Merrill purchased all of these machine tools from MAG, an equipment builder of tailored production solutions based on state-of-the-art technology that serves aerospace, automotive and truck, heavy equipment, oil and gas, rail, solar energy, wind turbine production and general machining applications.

The relationship between this OEM and Merrill has now expanded beyond the traditional “machine tool provider and job shop customer” relationship, with Merrill actually machining parts for MAG machines – a case of having the right equipment to meet customer needs.

“As a job shop you never know who your next customer is going to be or what you are going to be asked to manufacture,” adds Yackel. “Having the latest technology, multi-tasking capabilities and the machine capacity to handle large parts has opened a lot of doors for us into new industries so that we can protect our business with strong market diversification.”

Down to making parts for the builder you purchased your equipment from. Now that’s a return on investment.

Merrill Tool & Machine, 21659 W. Gratiot Road, Merrill, MI 48637, 989-643-7981, Fax: 989-643-7975, www.merrilltool.com.

MAG Industrial Automation Systems, 3940 Olympic Boulevard, Erlanger, KY 41048, 859-534-4600, www.mag-ias.com.