BUCKLEY OWENS MACHINERY CORP PH 315-432-0708
6416 FLY ROAD FAX 315-299-2684
EAST SYRACUSE, NY 13057 EMAIL INFO@BUCKLEYOWENS.COM
SMARTSOLUTIONS - WINDPOWER
Horizontal boring mills (HBMs), used to process gear case assemblies, planetary carriers and hubs, are increasing their one-stop processing capabilities with contouring heads and programmable boring bars, which reduce the number of tools (and tool changes) need to complete a part. One tool can bore multiple diameters and produce complex part geometries. A contouring head combined with a programmable boring bar can perform nine to 10 different operations (atypical for a boring mill) on a part, including threading, grooving, turning, contouring, taper turning and others, internally and externally. Right-angle heads and precision rotary tables add capabilities for five-sided part processing in a single setup.
Vertical turning centers (VTCs) for production of bearing rings and planetaries normally apply a stationary tool on the end of a movable ram, but automatically interchangeable powered heads allow VTCs to add capabilities for drilling, milling, tapping, and similar operations with live tooling, all in one setup. The addition of a full-contouring 360,000-position C-axis table now enables drilling or mill turning of features anywhere on the workpiece.
The Universal Machining Center a machine that can approach a part from a horizontal or vertical orientation. Designed for large, complex-geometry parts, the UMC allows five-axis/five-side machining, with automatically interchangeable heads for faster processing and reduced work-in-process. With a spindle ram mounted on a crossrail, this machine can have a rail or moving-bed design. A rail design allows the machine to have multiple work zones under the spindle, so operators can load and unload parts while the machine continues operations in other work zones.
Horizontal machining centers are a mainstay of prismatic parts manufacturing, and the machines are growing in size, speed and multitasking capability to meet needs in wind energy manufacturing. Twin-pallet machines for wind parts typically have a table size of 1250 x 1600 mm and accept parts weighing up to 7000 kg (15,400 pounds).
Many of the main metal components of wind turbines start out as castings or forgings that can require hundreds of hours of precision machining. Part accuracies are as high, or higher, than those of aerospace parts. Machining challenges include tight tolerances, capacity/throughput, complex geometries, inline bore precision, parallelism between bores, bore concentricity, and precision mating surfaces.
Meeting these challenges on large parts is complicated by part weight and size. Great risk and time are involved when parts weighing up to 80,000 pounds are transferred from one machine to another to produce different features on different surfaces. Such transfers often degrade overall part accuracy, too, as tiny setup errors stack up each time the part is refixtured.
Four primary metal-cutting machines for massive wind turbine components-horizontal boring mills, vertical turning centers, horizontal or universal machining centers, and horizontal turning centers-are increasing their multitasking capabilities to meet the needs of the wind industry.
