Machining centre mills, grinds, and polishes components at a single set-up

Citation

(2003), "Machining centre mills, grinds, and polishes components at a single set-up", Aircraft Engineering and Aerospace Technology, Vol. 75 No. 4. https://doi.org/10.1108/aeat.2003.12775dad.003

Machining centre mills, grinds, and polishes components at a single set-up

Machining centre mills, grinds, and polishes components at a single set-up

Keywords: Machining, Grinding, Equipment

Building on the expertise gained with their revolutionary Flexible Grinding Centre, Bridgeport has now brought to the market another variant of its widely-used VMC 1000XP vertical machining centre – the MGP 1000. This makes it possible to execute milling, grinding and polishing operations at a single set-up and thus provides a complete start-to-finish service for many types of components.

Now in full operation, at a company in Finland (supplied by the Bridgeport distributors SEM COMP OY), the first of Bridgeport's MGP 1000 machines is busily producing special mirrors that are needed to provide laser-based measurements during the production of paper. This initial machine is the result of a close co-operation between Bridgeport and its customer whereby the latter made available its own development work on the production of aluminium mirrors that enabled the Leicester-based machine tool builder to reconfigure a VMC 1000XP structure to make a possible a single set-up operation.

The VMC 1000 XP was chosen for reconfiguration in this way because of its acknowledged high level of standard attributes. The new version comes with the optional 30 station ATC and 12,000 rpm spindle as well as a Nikken 5AX 200 table, to give a full five-axes capability under the highly-effective Heidenhain iTNC530 digital CNC control system, with special grinding cycles included.

Clearly, any machine tool carrying out both milling and grinding operations must have a compatible coolant system. This machine was supplied with the necessary filtration and swarf conveyor system to meet the needs.

The company foresees a growth market for sales of this type of customised flexible machining centre as more users realise the value of combining totally different types of operation on a single machine. The ability to complete both the manufacture and the finishing of parts in a single hit, whilst maintaining the highest level of accuracy and quality control requirements, is an extremely attractive proposition.

Bridgeport particularly stress how well- suited this machine can be in cases where aggressive types of chip/swarf combinations might result from the unusual combination of machining and finishing processes. Anyone currently manufacturing components that need to be transferred from a conventional milling process onto a grinding or polishing machine now available to them have potential savings, both in time and labour, that this new VMC provides.