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Tooling & Workholding
itself. You can’t just buy a high-speed machine and keep
everything else the same. That won’t work.” Rego-Fix will
introduce its powRgrip system, which covers sizes from 0.2
to 25.4-mm diameter. “We have two systems, our legacy ER
system and the powRgrip system for micromilling. With the
PG 6, we can really go down small, down to 0.2 mm in the
micromilling area,” Weber concludes.
The Trend...More Stations...More Tools
According to Walt Bachmann, Exsys Tool Inc. (San
Antonio, FL), his company is called upon often to design
new tooling connections to fit the multifunction capabilities
of milling machines and lathes that increasingly resemble
one another in capability. Bachmann explains: “Constant
innovations from single spindle and one turret to main and
subspindle with multiple turrets have clouded the difference
between a lathe and a milling machine. Older CNC lathes
used only the main spindle requiring a second operation
94 ManufacturingEngineeringMedia.com | August 2012
Photo courtesy Exsys Tool Inc.
for the
unmachined
other end.
Today, the
subspindle
picks up the
part from the
main spindle
where it can be
machined complete
in one operation. On newer
equipment both main and subspindles
have C-axis control, programmable to a fraction of a degree
for machining hole patterns or contouring. But this required
many tools and, therefore, the turrets had to accommodate
several toolstations, or the machine needed more turrets, so
the front end of the part could be machined with one turret,
while the other end was machined by the second turret.