Multitasking Machines
To help shops react quicker and more flexibly to market demands for increasingly complex parts in smaller batch sizes, multi-tasking machines use a single setup to perform different metalworking operations that completely process a part of raw material into a desired final shape and size without manual intervention. This improves part quality, accelerates manufacturing and directly impacts shop capacity, floor space, personnel and profitability.
Multi-Tasking Mania: The Vanishing Single-Function Machine
Multitasking can deliver considerable savings, particularly on complex work that is highly profitable, by completing a part in one cycle and dramatically reducing setup and other non-value-added time, preventing opportunities for error and eliminating work-in-process inventory that might otherwise lay idle between standalone machine tools.
Multitasking can deliver considerable savings, particularly on complex work that is highly profitable, by completing a part in one cycle and dramatically reducing setup and other non-value-added time, preventing opportunities for error and eliminating work-in-process inventory that might otherwise lay idle between standalone machine tools.
Shops are meeting the rising demand for high-mix/low-volume strategies by using innovative multi-tasking machines to fully optimize processes that encompass everything from the moment raw material enters into a shop up to the date the final part gets shipped.
Pharmaceutical equipment builders demand machined components with such ultra-high tolerances and complexity that many precision shops must pass on jobs that are simply too difficult or beyond their capability. Who can they turn to?
This machine shop took an unconventional approach to growing into one of the most dependable parts suppliers for a major manufacturer of construction and mining equipment, and now they enjoy a niche that most shops are unable to compete against.
Machining aerospace components involves very long cycle times and often high raw material costs that present competitive challenges for OEMs and production job shops alike. But here are two examples of how the latest CAD-CAM-CNC workflow can improve design-to-part protocols, machining time, tool life, surface finish, dimensional accuracies and overall production efficiencies.
Methods Machine Tools is offering four 3-axis vertical machining centers (VMCs) and a 5-axis bridge-type machining center made by Taiwanese tool builder Litz Hitech. Equipped with Fanuc controls, they provide an accurate and reliable mid-range machining solution.
The Tongtai VTX series from Absolute Machine Tools provide speeds up to 2,362 ipm in all axes and acceleration of 1.2 g. Two types of high-speed automatic tool-changing systems are available.
Accessories and adapters for SMW Autoblok’s manual APS and WPS stationary workholding systems ensure flexible clamping of nearly every geometry without interfering with machining or contours, making them ideal for 5-axis machining. Zero-point clamping reduces setup time up to 90%.
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