Improving spindle speeds with Haimer

Making chips means making money, so keeping the spindle turning is critical for a company's bottom line.

Timothy Mooney, Midwest regional sales manager for  Starrag USA, distributors of  high-precision machine tools, said his customers strive for a 75 percent spindle engagement time "That is the only time that they are making money."

Mooney spoke May 14 at the Haimer open house. The Villa Park, IL-based company showcased  shrink fitters, balancers and presetters. Also featured at the May 14-16 event were demonstrations of i4.0 wireless connectivity between presetters and a machining center.

The technology is critical to long-running machine life. The aerospace industry, for example, utilizes electrospindles that can run up to 65000 RPM, with typical machining speed of 30,000 to 33,000 RPM. "Without a balanced tool, bearings are going to be shot before you know it and you will have a really expensive repair."

A crashed spindle may run up to $65,000, Mooney said, and an imbalanced tool will likely shorten spindle life. "Customers using balancers and high quality tool holders will achieve between 8,000 and 12,000 hours of spindle life," he said. "Customers that don't [use balancers] achieve closer to 3,000 to 4,000 spindle hours, and that assumes the tool is reasonably balanced."

Mooney added that "with Haimer tool holders, you are going to have a tool that runs true, a tool that is shrunk in properly, and a tool that is going to hold it."

At Haimer's event, one of newest such products on display was the "industry 4.0 ready" Power Clamp that is network compatible for communication on the shop floor. Tool scanning capabilities allow shrink fit machines to read and automatically set the shrinking parameters via Data-Matrix codes. It is suitable for solid carbide and HSS tools for diameters 3 to 32 mm. 

Steven Baier, vice president of sales for Haimer said that the company's focus is providing customers with consistent tools, consistent holding forces, consistent tool runout. "Whether shrink fit tooling, balancing or tool presetting, our focus is giving our customers consistency of setup."

This can be seen in products such as the ShrinkFit. "Whether you are a brand new operator or a journeyman machining who has been on the job for 20 years, everybody changes the tools the same," he said. "With shrink fit, you always get three microns or one-tenth runout accuracy at 3x diameter of the cutter." 

With presetting, tool runout can be checked outside the machine tool allowing for production to continue. As for the company's balancers, all tool holder assemblies have inherent unbalance and unless this is corrected, the unbalance will cause vibration.

"Vibration can only go to two places, up into your spindle or down into your part," Baier said. "At the very least, you're going to have a surface finish issue or a cutting tool issue. At the worst, a spindle failure because the bearings will wear out because of the vibration."