Satellite Manufacturing – High Accuracy DRO and Scale Installation

Hardinge HLV-H and Aciera F3 Fitted With Acu-Rite DROs and Scales

EEC Ltd were recently commissioned by a satellite manufacturing company for installation of several DRO and scale setups. The customer had acquired a Hardinge HLV-H lathe and a Aciera F3 mill for their tool room. Neither of the machines had DROs (digital readouts) fitted at any point in the past – which is a very rare occurrence in this day and age. Therefore installing and fitting a DRO to either machine was an easier task than retro fitting to existing display brackets and holes. Acu-Rite DRO equipment was selected for this installation.

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High Accuracy DRO for Satellite Manufacturing

Once EEC had measured the travel axis of both machines, options were discussed with the customer in order to meet the accuracy and resolution that was needed. Satellite manufacturing requires extreme accuracy, and the customer required a 0.001mm resolution on all axis – taking into account that this would be doubled on the cross-slide of the Hardinge due to the nature of the Acu-Rite equipment.

At this stage EEC engineers set about designing brackets to mount the Acu-Rite DRO and scales, for a 2-axis system on the Hardinge lathe and a 3-axis system on the Aciera mill.

With the customer requiring a 0.001mm resolution on all axis, the Acu-Rite SENC 150 1μm scales were selected. However, due to this resolution not being implemented by many OEMs on their installations, these particular scales had to be made to order, offering a lead-time of around 10-12 weeks. This gave EEC plenty of time to design and provide drawings to a local machining company, to machine the custom made brackets – a company that EEC have used for over 30 years for custom DRO and Scale Sbrackets and fixings.

Once the Acu-Rite equipment had been manufactured and delivered, EEC contacted the customer to organise an installation date that would work-in with the their workload. EEC arrived on-site to install the 2 Acu-Rite systems. It made sense starting with the Hardinge lathe, as this machine would need to be used as a template – in order to adapt a spacer to complete the bracket arrangement for the X axis on the Aciera mill. This system was fitted successfully to the Hardinge lathe – and without modification to the custom brackets. The Acu-Rite DRO 203 display was mounted neatly on top of the switch box and hard wired into the transformer of the machine.

The Aciera mill was a somewhat more challenging machine to design brackets for – in terms of avoiding impeding the full articulation, travel and usage of the machine. EEC engineers have expertise and experience in fitting DRO systems to many different types of machines and were able to design brackets that achieved this without too many modifications, using a bit of ingenuity. Once the scales were fitted to the Aciera mill, the Acu-Rite DRO 203 display was fitted to the switch box and hard wired into the machine’s transformer.

Acu-Rite DRO Demonstration

Once both DRO and scale installations had been completed for our satellite manufacture customer – including fitting of guarding and implementation of tidy cable routing to avoid any issues/damage, the customer was invited to observe a full demonstration of the Acu-Rite DRO 203 display. EEC engineers always carry out a full demonstration upon completion of installation of equipment, so the customer has full working knowledge of the display with all available functions.

 

It is often the case that customers are not completely aware of how to fully utilise the complete functionality of their DROs fitted to their machines, due to never having a demonstration of the full capability, so EEC ensure that customers are armed with this knowledge.

 

After the demonstration was complete the customer was extremely happy with EECs installation and the digital readout and scale equipment that was installed. The improvements enhanced the customer’s ability to complete work pieces within the tolerances required by their customer base, and created the potential for further work.

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