Custom machines offer solutions standard ones sometimes can’t

There’s little that can’t be made with today’s standard CNC machine tools. They’re fast, accurate and powerful.

But every so often a job or part geometry comes along where a few extra inches in a machine’s work envelope would be helpful. Or perhaps a little higher rpm or an additional spindle are all that’s needed to make a job profitable.

At these and certain other times, it might be worth considering a custom machine.

It’s Elemental

Ben Brown, vice president of sales and marketing at Element Machine Tools Inc., offers several reasons why a custom CNC machine is often a better solution than a stock machine. “Our customers can take an à la carte approach to machine selection. They can pick whatever technology is most important to them, and we’ll design the machine accordingly,” he said. Customers can avoid having to buy a machine that costs considerably more money with options they don’t particularly need or care about, Brown added.

Equipping machines with Xbox-style controllers might be a great way to get young people interested in machining. Image courtey of Element Machine Tools.

One common modification is the ballscrew. A “fast-pitch” screw greatly increases rapid-traverse speeds but sacrifices power and torque, whereas a screw with a fine pitch provides just the opposite. Glass scales for high-precision work are also available, as are extended machine travels and any number of control modifications to enhance efficiency.

Brown cited an example of Element Machine’s control-modifying capabilities. The Lebanon, Maine, company is working with a manufacturer that needs custom software for a machine control. “We’re providing a very simple user interface that allows the machine operator to punch in the key features of the part and have the control generate the G code,” Brown said. “Features like this make it possible for even less-experienced operators to create programs on the fly.”

Automation accounts for roughly 70 percent of the custom machine orders at Cubic Machinery. Image courtesy of Cubic Machinery.

Brown’s task is made easier because Element designed the control. The PC-based Carbon-series CNC has an API (application programming interface) based on Lua, an open-source scripting language that makes it easy to modify the control interface. Because of this capability, virtually every control that leaves Element has been customized in some way, whether it’s the screens installed, database read/write capability or integration of third-party software, eliminating the need for an additional—and often expensive—interface.

Element also builds “off-the-shelf” equipment, including several models of CNC lathes, knee mills and machining centers. Any of these might be used as-is or converted into a special, reducing the lead time and development costs compared to building from scratch.

“We recently codeveloped a machine for a customer that wanted to produce baseball bats in very high volumes,” Brown said. “We modified one of our lathes with an autoloader, and added double blades for cutting each side of the bat simultaneously, a sanding system and customized control.” The customer can load raw stock and produce a finished bat in one operation, reducing the total manufacturing time by about 40 percent, Brown noted.

Preparing for a New Era

Autoloaders and other types of automated material-handling systems are a common addition to many machine tools.

Joe Lin, president of Chino, Calif.-based Cubic Machinery Inc., said adding automation accounts for roughly 70 percent of the company’s custom work. Many of his customers are seeing work come back from China, but the market remains very competitive, especially in California, where wages are high, he added.