Double column machining center
Just like other machining center models, double column machining center is one of the very common and productive machine tools that is applied to heavy cutting tasks in the industrial sectors such as aerospace, automotive, and energy generation. Inside the model inventory, double column machining center is a highly developed machine tool that can deal with multiple types of milling tasks at once. At first, machine center is evolved from milling machines at the 1960s and since then, the development of this specific type of machine tools progresses well in the industry, and after that machine centers are widely applied in all kinds of industries, contributing a wide range of industrial efforts. Regarding milling, as its name tells, is the process of machining that uses spinning tools to remove materials by advancing a tool into one or several work pieces. Such machining method could be done on different directions. Besides turning process, milling can cover a wide variety of various operations and the processing ranges a wide scale from single tiny parts to heavy and large gang milling operation tasks.
As a result, the continuing research and booming development of milling method (such as route planning) is highly popular in the industrial world due to its productive and effective characteristics for rendering work pieces with complex profiles in a shorter period of time. Because it is rather comparatively hard to achieve by conventional turning lathes. With this expectation, the corresponding development and the idea of machining centers are thus gradually formed. The phrase “machining center” can be used to describe a wide variety of CNC (Computer Numerical Control) drilling and milling machineries that are accommodated with several critical but sometimes optional accessories equipped together with the machine body itself, such as tool magazine, ATC (automatic tool changer), power tool turret, CMM (Coordinate Measuring Machine), multi-axis working tables, etc.
Besides the model of double column, there are still other categories in the machining center inventory such as vertical and horizontal, and these features often overlapped. Vertical machining center is the arrangement of its structure that aligns vertically, and the work pieces are machined by cutting tools that go up and down vertically. On the contrary, horizontal machining centers have the spindle arranged horizontally and the machining is conducted lying flat. With the vertical design, the weight of the work piece would help to make itself sternly located on the clamp for heavy vertical cutting route without much worry on route deviation. Furthermore, by the help of powered turret, the cycle time is thus shortened significantly. The work piece machining of machine centers are normally not of round shape but other complicated profiles since the former one can be dealt with by turning machine with power turret in a much more efficient way.
On the other hand, regarding the travel of the machine, traditional machining centers are designed at least with three axes, namely, x, y, and z. Nowadays as the industrial processes get complicated due to the demands for less processes, there are machining centers designed with the 4th and even 5th axis to complete all the cutting tasks on one stop station.