TECHNOLOGY NEWS:
Wafios promises much with FUL 45 spring coiler
Wafios launched its latest spring coiler at the recent wire 2006 show in Düsseldorf with the Latin slogan ‘Citius, altius, fortius’.
As well as being ‘Faster, higher, stronger’ the company is also promising its customers: “better efficiency, highly rigid units, increased user friendliness and high profitability”.
Wafios comments: “High demands on the quality and price of springs, a growing variety of spring shapes, sizes and materials with ever increasing tensile strengths, and also economical reasons, are forcing manu-facturers to re-think old ways and come up with some new. The FUL 45 can now provide these new ways.”
With an operating range of d=1.5–4.5mm (for Rm 2200 N/mm² or up to d=4.8mm for Rm 2000 N/mm²), this machine offers a broad range of application for all kinds of technical springs.
With a highly rigid cutting and shaping unit and a strong infeed unit with three pairs of feed rollers, the production of complicated clutch and valve springs is now possible – these would formerly have been produced on the next machine size up. Thus the FUL 45 has a very wide field of application while maintaining the highest profitability.
The FUL 45 produces right- and left-hand coiled compression and tension springs, non-cylindrical and tension springs with and without pitch and also with loops
at tangential legs, from wire between 1.5 and 4.8mm diameter. The basic version of the FUL 45 has a total of eight CNC axes: wire infeed (1 CNC axis); straight, rotary and ‘flying’ cut (1 CNC axis); vertical and parallel pitch (2 CNC axes); coiling unit
(2 CNC axes); height adjustment of mandrel box (1 CNC axis); and horizontal mandrel adjustment (1 CNC axis).
The powerful wire infeed is carried out by means of three infeed roller pairs and guarantees not only the required force
for the production of springs with a very tight coiling ratio but also a very high output.
The roller contact pressure is pneumatically produced. Each roller pair is separately programmable at the control panel which also allows the clamping and unclamping
of rollers.
The newly designed multi-cutting system is quickly and easily convertible. It offers four cutting options: straight cut; rotary cut with wire feed at a standstill; ‘flying’ rotary cut with simultaneous wire feed; and cutting off springs with a small coiling ratio by torsion cut (optional).
The conversion from one type of cut to another is carried out within few minutes due to a very simple mechanical system (which does not require the exchange of the cutting slide) and user-friendly software.
The cutter tools are newly designed and consist of a holder with exchangeable cut-ter tool inserts. Even this detail reflects the goal of an economical machine which the Wafios engineers have implemented: shorter change-over times and lower tool costs due to smaller but long-lasting tungsten carbide cutting inserts which are less expensive than the long tungsten carbide cutting tools. The new coiling arrangement is more rigid
and guarantees extremely high precision at the spring diameter even when running the machine at high speed.
An elaborate mechanical system which is also integrated in the basic version of the FUL 45, enables the change of the coiling direction within a short period of time.
As an option, there are two more CNC axes available for the automatic conversion of the coiling direction at the push of a button. With these additional shape axes, the FUL 45 disposes of a total of ten CNC axes which facilitate not only the conversion from right- to left-hand coiling but also the adjustment of the spring to the spring center and to the center position of the coiling pins.
For these coiling pins, too, Wafios keeps a cost-effective tool solution ready: instead of coiling pins with a round shank, coiling inserts can now be employed with corresponding holders (as an option). Coiling inserts can be exchanged without having to adjust the tool settings. Thus the FUL 45 can quickly resume production.
The FUL 45 has a motor-driven height adjustment of the mandrel box in form of a programmable servo axis. The programmed position of a spring is saved in the spring program and is reproducible at any time. Another novelty is that the mandrel displacement has been designed as another servo axis.
This servo axis helps to considerably facilitate the adjustment to the corresponding spring diameter, to guarantee the reproducibility of the position for repeated adjustment and to enable sophisticated tool solutions with different cutting-off positions within a cycle.
As machine operators are under extreme pressure in terms of time and cost, quick set-up and change-over times are essential. The FUL 45 not only focuses on flexibility and thus broad fields of application but also on fast and precise programming. Not only large batches but also small and medium-sized batches must be economically produced and this requires flexible software.
To this end Wafios has adapted its well-established and user-friendly Wafios Programming System WPS III for the FUL 45. The WPS III also has the advantage of a homogenous programming structure which is the same for other machine types as well: from the torsion spring machine of the FMU series over the bending machines of the BM series up to tube benders.
With the WPS III, the operator can program the spring either graphically or by entering spring geometry elements. Spring data is entered via touch screen.
The operator has the opportunity to program simple springs very quickly or to produce complicated springs by means of macros and additional functions.
The FUL 45 is delivered with an optical camera monitoring system as standard. This system is used for measuring and regulating spring lengths and diameters as well as for optically monitoring spring geometries.
Customers reported that the programming of the camera which is integrated in the WPS III, is easily adjustable to the spring. The measuring results can be directly analysed at the machine for production statistics (SPC).
Wafios also offers online support for the FUL 45 to provide back-up for the machine operators should this be necessary.
Company: |
Wafios AG |
Country: |
Germany |
Fax: |
+49 7121-491209 |
Email: |
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Website: |