TPT July 2012

Technology News

Stream finishing machine THE SF-5 stream finishing machine is the latest product from Otec, and is designed to produce perfect surfaces through edge rounding, polishing, de-burring and smoothing, with high precision, and with finishing times of as little as 3 to 4 seconds for a single workpiece (eg for edge rounding). whilst the process is running, making down time for loading and unloading unnecessary. The machine has five grippers that can hold items such as thread taps or carbide drills of widely varying diameters: two with diameters of over 10mm and three with diameters of less than 10mm. Workpieces with diameters ranging from 2 to 20mm and with lengths of up to 350mm can be inserted.

With the standard version of the SF-5, the only manual operation (as per process definition) is the loading and unloading of the individual workpieces. When linked to a robot, even this task is dispensed with. This second component therefore transforms the SF-5 into a fully automatic system. The robot picks up the tools from marked pallets and in doing so receives all the data needed for inserting them into the gripper, as well as the data needed for the respective process, such as immersion depth, speed and the processing time that must elapse before the changeover position is reached, from which the robot then collects the items concerned and sets them down again correctly. Typical applications for these machines include the edge rounding and polishing of drills and carbide cutters, the polishing of drill bodies and the de-burring and rounding of thread taps.

Otec is constantly striving to find better solutions for the surface finishing of workpieces, both from the point of view of performance and in terms of cost-effectiveness. A key feature of the new machine is that five workpieces can be finished at the same time and can be changed

The pneumatically operated three- finger grippers ‘know’ everything: the depth to which each workpiece needs to be immersed, the speed and the right processing time. When the job is done, they move the workpiece into the changeover position. A further technological advance is the use of purging air. This serves to prevent the cooling lubricant holes from becoming clogged during the rounding of cutting edges. With Otec’s patented process, air is blasted through at a pressure of 1.5 bar when the workpiece is immersed in the medium. The pressure is then reduced to 0.5 bar during the process and briefly increased again to 1.5 bar when the process is complete.

The SF-5 stream finishing machine

Otec Präzisionsfinish GmbH – Germany Fax: +49 7082 4911 29

Email: info@otec.de Website: www.otec.de Combined sawing and chamfering

blasting station to remove chips; control station; and touch panel screen from Siemens.

and length accuracy ±0.5mm (0.02"). The line also features a high production rate: one 6.5m (21.5ft) long bar with both ends chamfered and faced is produced every eight seconds. The working processes include HSS slitting sawmodule; chamfering internal, external and face, on the same station;

RAVNI Technologies has developed a combined sawing and chamfering machine. The main characteristic of the line is the flexible process on a small range: 13m long distributor; Ø from 0.8 to 45mm (0.032" to 1.8"); thickness from 0.5 to 5mm (0.02" to 0.2"); cutting from 30 to 8,000mm long (1" to 26ft);

Ravni Technologies – France Fax: +33 477 90 58 65 Email: info@ravni.com Website: www.ravni.com

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July 2012