A new cnc machine center is an advanced machine tool that enables the machining of parts, usually metal, by material removal. In general, we refer to milling or machining in a general way. This blog focuses on the applications of CNC machining centers.
The spindle of the new vertical cnc machine center is in a vertical position. It can complete milling, boring, drilling, tapping and cutting threads, and other processes. The new vertical cnc machine center is at least three axes two linkages, and generally can achieve three axes three linkages. Some can carry out five-axis, and six-axis control and craftspeople can determine the processing range of the machining center according to the number of axes controlled at the same time.
Vertical machining center column height is limited, to determine the Z-axis range of motion to consider:
① The height of the workpiece.
② The height of the fixture.
③ The length of the cutting tool.
④ The space occupied by the manipulator to change the tool.
After considering the above four situations, the processing range of the vertical machining center for the box-type workpiece should be reduced, which is the weakness of the vertical machining center. But the vertical machining center has the following advantages:
① The workpiece is easy to clamp, available general clamps such as flat pliers, platens, dividing heads, rotary table, and other clamping workpiece, workpiece clamping positioning are convenient;
② The tool trajectory is easy to observe, the debugging program is convenient to check and measure, can find problems in time, stop processing or modification;
③ The cooling conditions are easy to establish, and the coolant can reach the tool and the machining surface directly;
④ The coordinate system, namely X, Y, and Z coordinate axes, is consistent with the Cartesian coordinate system, which is intuitive and consistent with the drawing perspective;
⑤ Chips are easy to be eliminated and dropped to avoid chips scratching the processed surface;
The structure of the general use of a single column and the corresponding horizontal processing center are compared, a simple structure, small footprint, and low price.
A vertical machining center is suitable for processing the Z axis of the relatively small size of the workpiece, in general, except for the bottom surface can not be processed, the other five surfaces can be used for contour and surface processing with different tools.
The spindle of the horizontal machining center is set horizontally. The general horizontal machining center has three to five axes, often equipped with a rotary shaft (or rotary workpiece table), the spindle speed within 10 ~ 10000r/min, the minimum resolution is generally lμm, positioning accuracy is 10μm – 20μm.
Horizontal machining center knife storage capacity is generally large, some knife storage can store hundreds of tools. The structure of the horizontal machining center is more complex than that of the vertical machining center, with a larger volume and area, and a higher price. A horizontal machining center is more suitable for processing box parts. As long as clamping on the rotary workbench, the box (in addition to the top and bottom surface) of the four surface milling, boring, drilling, tapping, and other processing. In particular, some holes and cavities on the box parts have position tolerance requirements (such as the parallelism between the hole system, the perpendicularity of the hole and the end face, the perpendicularity of the end face and the bottom surface, etc.), as well as holes and cavities and datum surface (bottom surface), have strict dimensional accuracy requirements, in the horizontal machining center through a clamping processing, easy to ensure, suitable for batch processing of the workpiece.
Horizontal machining center program debugging, is not as intuitive as vertical machining center, easy to observe, inspection and measurement of the workpiece are inconvenient, and the processing of complex parts debugging time is several times of normal processing, so the more the number of processing workpiece, the less time each piece occupies the machine tool on average, so using horizontal machining center for batch processing is cost-effective. But it can achieve the accuracy and quality requirements of ordinary equipment is difficult to achieve, so some precision requirements, other equipment can not reach the precision requirements of the workpiece, especially some space surface and shape complex workpiece, even if it is a single piece of production, can also be considered in the horizontal machining center processing. It can be seen that the processing center is not only an efficient and high-quality automatic production equipment but also equipment to overcome technological problems.
The coordinate system of the horizontal machining center is different from the coordinate system of the vertical machining center, namely the X, Y, and Z axis in space. And the horizontal machining center cooling conditions are not as good as the vertical, especially for deep hole boring, milling, drilling, and cooling liquid difficult to reach the cutting depth, therefore, must reduce the machine speed and feed, reduce the production efficiency.
Compared with the vertical machining center, the horizontal machining center has many functions. The workpiece that can not be processed on the vertical machining center can be processed on the horizontal machining center in general. In addition, the rotary table of the horizontal machining center has some numerical control, some are graded, and the workpiece clamping can realize the processing of multiple stations. In general, horizontal processing center has their advantages, but also has shortcomings, use their best to avoid their bad.
(3)Should you choose a vertical or horizontal machining center?
The spindle orientation of a machining center is either vertical or horizontal. Both systems have advantages and disadvantages.
The spindle is oriented horizontally and allows for low-angle cutting, especially on the side of the workpiece.
This type of machining is suitable for milling slots or shaping flat surfaces.
It is suitable for machining very large parts and complex geometries.
This configuration facilitates chip evacuation.
Tool change time is fast.
It offers a pallet change function.
This type of machining is more suitable for heavy parts requiring machining on several sides.
The spindle is oriented vertically so tools are cut from the top of the workpiece.
It allows the machining of large parts by working all sides of a part without the intervention of an operator.
This type of machining is suitable for the grinding of dies and the machining of tool parts.