Roeders high speed cutting machining centre

Available from Hurco Europe and called RXP 1200, the 26 tonne machine has linear drives in all axes and a choice of spindles from 30,000 rpm/HSK F63, ideal for deep hole drilling in hardened steel, to 60,000 rpm /HSK E32 for high speed profiling. The in-house developed control system in particular plays a major role in distinguishing the RXP 1200 from the competition. The development, adaptation and maintenance of our control software alone requires a workforce of ten engineers. They focus on aspects such as fine-tuning and optimising machining paths, while at the same time paying attention to the control loops of the machine. The benefits, says the company, show clearly in the machining results our customers achieve. The company's control system is able to reduce cycle times by double-digit percentages, it is claimed. At the same time, the Roeders control smoothes surfaces using advanced, patented mathematical algorithms that achieve smooth tangential transitions. This is evident from the absence of steps when machining with finishing cutters of small diameter. Another advantage is that circles, which often are not optimally converted and executed by post processors generating NC code from CAD data, are automatically rounded. Milestones in Roeders control system evolution include optimised spline interpolation, command line execution times below 0.1 ms and look-ahead of more than 10,000 command lines. This made it possible, together with internal positioning resolution of less than 1 nanometre, to achieve small positioning increments of between 0.1 and 0.05 microns. The results are said to be outstandingly smooth surfaces, as well as very high feeds of up to 60 m/min and often over 10 m/min when a tool is cutting. The machine additionally features a tool cleaning facility and is equipped with 10 cooling circuits that avoid the need for any spindle position compensation, even on long programmes of many hours' duration.