If you’re already probing, don’t sacrifice the all-important reliability of the cycle. There’s no reason you should be hoping the workpiece is clean. Chip blowers and chipfans add a minute or two of cycle time, but they act as an insurance policy. In addition to automatically cleaning a part, they’ll guarantee that manual or automatic offsets are right, ultimately avoiding significant downtime. These convenient tools are loaded directly into a spindle or tool changer and can be programmed seamlessly into a machining process. While some might consider our first examples non-essential, this next chain-fortifying solution is more fundamental to the machining process. Zero-point workholding allows you to flip/load parts precisely, perform operations and remove them quickly. Just to get you thinking: If the capability is there to inspect automatically on a machine, there’s no good reason for sluggish unloading, right? Why, then, opt to use vises or common jaws? Our UNILOCK workholding system, an example of zero-point clamping, uses spring pressure or manual actuation to clamp knobs in fixed locations for rapid unloading, loading and locating of fixtures and workpieces. Standard knobs can be clamped and mounted in a blind location hole from the bottom or fastened from the top of a fixture. If ever there’s a chance the machine will be handling a lot of changeovers, especially for automation, trying to be efficient is next to impossible without zero- point clamping and sacrifices to productivity. Again, think about
For precision deep hole machining the SMART DAMPER enables high-cutting parameters to be used, achieving extremely short cycle times and improving productivity by up to a factor of 10.
what’s happening around your current situation, before and after buying. Boring tools and setups offer opportunity for adding value instead of just plugging a hole. Customers are always looking to come up with a universal way for their tools to do more. Their first instinct is to ask for a longer tool, but let’s take a step back with them. Because we have one of the most versatile modular boring systems at our disposal, the continuously improved CK system, let’s start with the shortest tool and build from there. That way, you have tooling that can do more than one thing and you’re not sacrificing speed every time you use the longer tool. The same goes for vibration damping in long boring or milling operations. Cobbling together extensions may eventually get the job done the cheapest way possible, but why struggle with it? It’s not worth the trade-off when something like the SMART DAMPER is available. The integrated design of the SMART DAMPER system shortens the distance from the
damper and the cutting edge, which is the source of vibration and chatter. You can get anything to work if you slow it down enough, but is it worth it? For our final example, let’s turn to a finishing operation. I often hear from customers that they don’t want to chamfer on the machine because it takes up too much cutting time when there are operators that can do it after. It’s a fair argument, but still another example of thinking of cutting tools and holders as conveniences instead of opportunities to add value with the help of today’s machinery. Hand deburring may seem simple, but it’s not always repeatable. It takes skill and time to hit every single edge with a file or shiv. Even for deburring, better cutting technology is out there. Machines can run around a part much faster than can be done by hand — and then the part’s done. The C-CUTTER MINI is built to the lowest diameter limits in order to optimize chip load and spindle speeds when chamfering small and large features. The cutter can use
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