What is a machining center?

Machining Center

1. Main functions and features

Today, the processing center (machining center, or MC) is being widely used in the manufacturing site. Led by the mold manufacturing as the most important use, the processing center has become an indispensable existence in the processing of metal parts. Take the automobile industry as an example, represented by the grinding and drilling of engine parts, it plays a power in body parts mold manufacturing. It is entirely conceivable that many of the products that support People's Daily life and industrial development come from processing centers.

The characteristic of the processing center, is equipped with the use of computer control to achieve the "automatic tool replacement function". Different from the processing machine that requires manual replacement of tools, the processing center can use the "replacement arm" to automatically replace the tools from the tool storage place called the "tool library" for processing. This can save the trouble of switching, realize the manufacturing of unmanned, labor saving, cut costs.

In recent years, on the basis of the traditional vertical, horizontal and high 3-axis processing, the new 2-axis "5-axis processing center" has been launched, which can process more complex shapes.

2. The birth and development of the processing center

To make metal parts, generally speaking, in addition to the surface, groove grinding, but also must be drilling, boring (expanding holes), spiral cutting and other processing. In the past, in order to carry out the above processing, need to distinguish the use of milling machine, vertical milling cutter, drill, boring, screw and other tools.
Later, with the advent of NC working machine, the manual tool replacement function known as the turret was developed, making the tool replacement more convenient. The machining center is further through the computer control, to realize the automation of the tool replacement. It can continuously process multiple surfaces of the processing at the same time, which greatly improves the production efficiency. The processing accuracy and speed of the processing center are improving year by year, and now it has become the mainstay of the manufacturing industry.

A tour of metalworking manufacturers' factories shows many processing centers running around the clock. Only a few operators are needed to monitor the equipment on site.

3. Main structure and species of the processing center

Processing center can be roughly divided into horizontal, vertical, door type these three structures. The first developed is a structure called horizontal, in short, the rotating shaft (spindle) on which the tool is mounted horizontally (horizontally to the ground). In contrast, the vertical type is the longitudinal installation of the rotation axis structure. The door type (gantry type) uses the same structure as the door, and the rotating axis is installed downward on the top of the door.
Take the horizontal type as an example, the main structure of the machining center, from the bottom to the top, is the base plate part of the bed body, the sliding saddle moving on the bed body, the working table connected to the processing material, the column installed in the direction perpendicular direction to the bed body, the main shaft of the installation tool, etc.

4. The difference between horizontal type and vertical type

The tool rotary shaft of the horizontal machining center extends horizontally to process the machining material in the horizontal direction. At this time, the column is moved along the X axis direction, the sliding saddle along the Y axis direction, and the workbench along the Z axis direction, which can realize three-dimensional machining. On this basis, some models also have a B axis that can rotate part of the bench in the horizontal direction, which can be processed with a total of 4 axes.
The advantage of the horizontal type is that the four axes including axis B can simultaneously process the four surfaces of the processed material. Because there is no need to manually change the four surfaces of the processed material, it has the characteristics of high machining accuracy. In addition, because the transverse cutting can let the chips fall naturally, but also can easily avoid the accumulation of chips on the processing material, embedded in the tool, resulting in failure problems.

In contrast, the rotating axis of the vertical machining center is installed in the vertical direction, showing the structure of processing the machining material from above. Usually, the workbench is moved in the horizontal direction along the X axis and Y axis, and the rotation axis is moved in the vertical direction for 3-axis processing.
It takes up less installation space than the horizontal side of the rotating shaft, and is now widely available. Moreover, due to the cutting material from above, it has the advantage of processing while comparing the design drawings. But at the same time, due to the processing in the upper part of the processing material, it is easy to accumulate debris, must be at any time through the compressed air blast or using lubricating oil agent washing, to remove the debris.