Inca Geometric designs and manufactures replacement toolchangers for automotive firm's VMCs

Managing director at the Chartham, near Canterbury, Kent-based company, Mike Cain, explained: "The project started with Inca being requested to refurbish several 50 taper 12-tool and 40 taper 24-tool carousel format tool magazines. The mechanisms were fast becoming a focal point for maintenance at the company, following around-the-clock machining over a number of years, a growing experience of damage from malfunctions in the toolchange system and the occasional collision situation." With different remedies required from unit to unit, which at times required major rectification and a significant number of damaged parts requiring replaced, each mechanism had to be individually assessed for repair. This prompted Inca's design team to put offer a complete redesign, using aluminium in place of stainless steel, which cost less than two-thirds the price of a replacement system, as supplied from the original machine tool builder. Now produced in batches of five, Inca manufactures and assembles the complete units ready for the customer's maintenance engineers to refit as a package to the machine. Each assembly comprises the tool disc, a centre spider and top plate, and all the clamping elements such as fingers, plungers, hinges and stop pins. The most complex and critical central spider was tooled for production by Inca's tooling partner Sumitomo Electric Hardmetal, with its tooling engineer working with Inca's setter operators on a bridge-type CNC borer and CNC horizontal borer. Key in providing the complete tooling package was Sumitomo's latest range of low-friction diamond-like-carbon coated milling cutter inserts and general-purpose SumiDrill Power Series SDP type drills. Said works manager Tony Clifford: "We involve Sumitomo on complex or different to normal production, in order to optimise the process and match their most effective tools to the power and torque values of the machine and component features. This not only saves compromise and 'making do' on an important component, but also we have found it creates a significant overall cost and lead time advantage."