The Hardinge Group Blog

Today’s mid and high performance cnc lathes are often times ordered with a second or sub spindle option to help increase productivity by eliminating secondary machining operations. In order to get the most productivity from this type of machine option there are a number of additional options that should be considered. These options will increase production uptime, while minimizing the potential for machine damage.

Key options to consider:

1. Parts Ejection
2. Part Present Detection
3. Thru Sub Spindle Coolant
4. Sub Spindle Air blast

Sub spindle options are becoming more prevalent in today’s marketplace for lathes. All the above features should be considered when investigating a sub spindle option for a particular project. Additionally whenever the thru spindle coolant or air blast features are used, it may be beneficial to rotate the spindle at a slow (50rpm) speed while activating the option, to help allow the chips to evacuate better.

Tool probes on machines are popular option to allow quick setting of the tool offsets to reduce setup time. If the machine is equipped with an automatic style tool probe there are additional features that can often be utilized. For example if an application calls for redundant tools for use with the tool life management feature, once all the tool lives have been expended though the course of the machining cycle, the operator would change all the tools and using a prewritten program use the automatic tool probe to automatically reconfirm all the tool offsets by cycling the program using the automatic mode. This could reduce the time from manually using the tool touch probe. Another often overlooked area for possible use is for broken tool detection. The automatic tool probe can very easily be written into a machining program to determine whether a cutting tool has been damaged, such as a drill or tap, and the machine cycle would then stop if the tool is found to be outside its preset limits.

In most every job shop environment quick set up’s are now the norm. “Extended Edit” is a control option that allows the customer to “copy/move/merge/change” portions of the part program at the machine. This is a very helpful tool that can reduce time at the machine when re-sequencing of the program or mass changes are required. This feature works very similar to the “copy/cut/paste/find/replace” features on a PC. As an example when a mass change needs to be done throughout a part program, such as a feed rate change, one could easily use the change feature to perform this. In addition a complete program or portions of programs can be copied and saved to the buffer. These can then be merged back into existing programs or used to create similar programs when manufacturing families of parts.