For heavy duty milling and drilling applications seen commonly in oil and gas, heavy casting and weld cleanups, special equipment is often necessary to get the best results.
In the video above, we look at a Somex mill drill spindle assembly for heavy duty milling, drilling, multihead and tapping applications with Lee Coleman, director of sales and marketing for Suhner Industrial Products.
“For companies that need the ability to have several tools for several processes, this assembly is a must,” said Coleman. “Most customers with a tapping application or precise tool change loading application, instead of using an AC motor or vector motor will use a servo motor. This unit can go up to 40 horsepower.”
The unit shown in the video above has a 10 pitch lead screw with an accuracy within a thousandths in feed, with a rotation accurate within a half-a-thousandths and a run out of about four-tenths of a thousandths, explained Coleman.
This level of accuracy eliminates the need for a secondary finishing machine.
“A Somex assembly like this can be used in any orientation in numerous applications and even in hostile environments, with some guarding,” Coleman said.
Controls provided with the Somex assembly can be designed with input from engineers on the customers side.
In the basic layout, drilling and tooling routines are laid out as “recipes” with detailed graphics to illustrate the process.
“This control system allows a customer to quickly edit recipes and change tooling to quickly go from one part to the other for maximum flexibility,” Coleman explained. “Our IO screen tells you what may be wrong with your spindle, outlining your settings plainly, if there are errors. There’s also an alarm screen, settings screen and statistics screen, among others.”
With “conversational programming” training employees on the system is made far simpler.
For more information, watch the video above and visit the Somex and Suhner websites.