Article From: 9/8/2010 Production Machining
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As the aerospace, automotive and mold-and-die industries trend toward monolithic components and large structures, there is a growing need for large-travel machining centers. To accommodate large-volume machining, Haas Automation Inc. has expanded the capacity of its EC-1600 HMC with an additional 10” of Y-axis travel.
The HMC features a 64" × 50" × 32" work cube—10 more inches of Y-axis travel than before—as well as a 64" × 32" T-slot table and a 6,000-rpm, geared-head, 50-taper spindle. The fully enclosed machine includes multiple chip augers to evacuate chips and a flood coolant system with a 95-gallon capacity.
The massive cast-iron construction increases rigidity and dampens vibration, and the standard T-slot table supports parts weighing as much as 10,000 lb. The 50-taper geared-head spindle is powered by a 30-hp vector drive system, providing 450 foot-pounds of torque for heavy cutting. A 30+1 side-mount tool changer is standard, as well as a color LCD remote jog handle, rigid tapping, 1 MB of program memory, a 15" color LCD monitor and a USB port.
For machining all four sides of a workpiece in a single setup, an optional 5-degree indexing table is available. The indexer uses a face-gear coupler design that provides superior accuracy and extreme rigidity for off-center milling and drilling/tapping operations. With a 30" platter diameter and 10,000-lb weight capacity, the indexer easily positions very large parts to almost any angle for machining. A full fourth-axis platter is also available for high-speed contouring and fully interpolated motion.
For high-speed machining operations, an optional 10,000-rpm, 50-taper spindle (30 hp, geared-head) is available for the HMC. Other high-productivity options include high-speed machining software with full look-ahead, high-pressure through-spindle coolant systems, a programmable coolant nozzle, linear scales, an Intuitive Probing System (tool and work offset), Ethernet connectivity and more.
