What Are The Advantages Of Turning-milling Compound Machine Tools Compared With Existing Technologies?

What are the advantages of turning-milling compound machine tools compared with existing technologies?

Whether it is worth buying a turn-milling compound machine tool is probably a question that many machining bosses will struggle with. One device can be used by several devices, which sounds pretty good, but when it comes to actually paying for it, you have to calculate the details carefully. Today we analyze this matter carefully and see what tangible benefits this machine tool can bring to the workshop.

One-time clamping saves more than just time

In the traditional processing method, there is a rotary part, which needs to be tossed back and forth between lathes, milling machines, and drilling machines. Every time the machine tool is replaced, the card must be installed and aligned again. This step alone can consume half an hour. If you encounter parts that require high precision, repeated clamping is particularly easy to cause errors to accumulate.

Turning and milling composite machine tools integrate turning, milling, drilling, boring, and tapping. Looking forward to the future of turn-milling composite processing . The parts only need to be installed once, and it can be completed from start to finish. There is a factory in Jiangsu that is engaged in the production of hydraulic valves. Last year, it replaced three pieces of equipment with turning and milling composite functions. What are the advantages of turn-milling composite machine tools compared with existing technologies? The valve core that originally required four processing steps can now be formed in one go. The processing time of a single part has been directly reduced from the original 40 minutes to 18 minutes.

Accuracy issues solved in one go

The biggest difficulty and pain point of repeated clamping is that accuracy cannot be effectively guaranteed. The first clamping is carried out to turn the outer circle, and the second clamping is carried out to mill the keyway. As long as there is a slight deviation in the position of the circle center during the two clampings, the product produced will definitely be judged to be scrapped. Especially for those parts with elongated shaft shapes, they are easily deformed. If they are repeated a few times, the situation will undoubtedly become worse.

Flexible spindle clamping mechanisms are used on turn-mill machines to maintain part stiffness during processing. A company engaged in automobile steering gear manufacturing in Zhejiang gave feedback that after the use of composite processing , the future outlook for turning and milling composite processing has been reduced. The product concentricity error has been reduced from the original 0.03 mm to less than 0.008 mm, and the scrap rate has dropped by more than 70%.

Tool change time is almost zero

In traditional machining, tool changing is an inconspicuous but extremely time-consuming link. The operator needs to stop the machine, loosen the tool, and then perform the tool change operation and then set the tool. It takes at least three to five minutes to complete such a process. If you change the knife twenty times a day, boy, that's over an hour of idle time.

The turret is designed for turn-mill machines to solve this problem. The dual-powered turret has 12 or more work stations. Commonly used tools can be installed at one time. When tool changes are required during processing, the tool turret can be completed in one rotation, which is close to zero tool change time. A boss in the hardware business in Guangdong calculated that this alone can save more than 20 working days a year.

Both heavy cutting and high-speed machining

Ordinary lathes can often take care of one end but not the other. If you plan to carry out heavy cutting, you have to make sacrifices in terms of rotational speed. If you want to achieve high-speed machining, you cannot withstand a large amount of cutting. There are always design conflicts between bed rigidity and spindle power.

Nowadays, many turn-milling machine tools use an integrally cast ductile iron bed, coupled with a nitrogen balance device to offset the load that moves up and down. In this way, it not only ensures the stability during large cutting volume, but also can run at high speed during finishing. There is a factory in Chongqing that is engaged in the production of engineering machinery parts. It uses composite machine tools to process large shafts made of No. 45 steel. The depth of cut can reach 8 mm during rough turning, and the speed can reach 2,500 rpm during fine turning. This kind of old equipment with compatibility cannot be compared with it.

Complex parts are no longer a problem

There are some parts that are inherently tricky, such as screws with spiral grooves, bushings with cross oil holes, and eccentric shafts, which may not be manufactured on ordinary machine tools, or require a lot of trouble with accessories such as indexing heads.

For turning and milling composite machine tools, the tool rotation and workpiece rotation can be controlled in a linkage manner, and axial turning and milling and orthogonal turning and milling can be switched at will. As long as the programming is appropriate, hexagonal milling, oblique hole drilling, and spiral groove washing are all basic operations. There is a mold factory in Shandong that accepted a military order last year, which required the processing of variable-pitch threads on a slender shaft. It relied entirely on the linkage function of composite machine tools to overcome this problem.

Saving people and land means saving money

What is the most difficult thing to recruit in the machining industry? He is a master craftsman, the kind who can independently operate a lathe and at the same time operate a milling machine. When the composite machine tool integrates the processes, one operator can keep an eye on several pieces of equipment. Moreover, there is no need to equip lathes, millers, and drillers as in the past.

Let’s talk about the size of the workshop. Initially, the lathes were placed in a row, and the milling machines were also placed in a row, and an area for turnover must be left in between. Nowadays, two or three compound machine tools can do the work that seven or eight pieces of equipment used to do, and the annual cost of renting a factory can be saved a lot. A professional fine processing factory in Suzhou responded that after the equipment was updated, the workshop’s footprint was reduced by 40% . Future prospects for turning and milling composite processing , and the electricity bill was also reduced by one-third, because the energy consumption caused by multiple starts and stops was reduced.

Do you think that the most urgent thing that needs to be solved in your workshop right now is accuracy or efficiency? You are warmly welcome to talk about the difficult processing problems you have encountered in the comment area, give likes and share so that more people in the same industry can witness these real cases.