Japan's top CNC machine tools began to use 3D printing fixture, do we follow the trend?

  Mr. Daniel O'Connor, content editor of TCT Group, visited the UK headquarters of Matsuura Machinery Manufacturing Institute. As the location of the largest five-axis machining center in the UK, Matsuura Machinery not only provides customers with metal 3D printing equipment, but also is currently users of many 3D printing equipment. Daniel is going to provide customers with machine processing on how Matsuura's CNC machining center uses 3D printing technology. Services for interviews.

CNC Center purchases plastic 3D printers. Why?

In March 2018, Matsuura UK purchased HP's 3D printing equipment for the first time. At that time, many people were very confused about the purchase. Why did a company famous for CNC metal processing buy a plastic 3D printing equipment? Later, it was discovered that it was because of Songpu Machinery's understanding of heavy machinery customers'needs and CNC processing that HP's MJF (multi-jet melting) technology could provide a new solution for the market.

The biggest obstacle to improve the running time of machine tools lies in the setting and switching of clamping system. The traditional workpiece fixture is made of metal and has a manufacturing cycle of up to two weeks. When faced with the use of customers who need quick response, this becomes the bottleneck of NC milling operation.

"Initially, we just wanted to use multi-jet molten parts to do the trial production of fixtures," said Peter Harris, Matsuura Machinery's add-on manufacturing manager. "But we did experience the speed of HP4200 multi-jet molten 3D printer using Autodesk Fusion 360 software. We customized and developed a set of workpiece clamping device on MX-850 five-axis NC machining center to cooperate with HP printing fixture.

The fixture is relatively cheap (only 50% of CNC). Compared with the traditional fixture, the weight of the fixture is quite light, which means that the mechanical bracket of the product can bear more weight, and more importantly, its manufacturing speed is obviously faster. "By using 3D printing, you can design, print, enter CNC in 48 hours and start processing custom parts for your customers," Peter said. This usually took two weeks before.

Which machining centers need to be equipped with 3D printing equipment?

"It's not that it's going to replace 100% of traditional fixtures. It's crazy," Peter explained. "But what we're proving is that 3D printing is powerful and versatile. For some applications with special production requirements, MJF can provide a truly viable alternative.

Further analysis shows that the core advantage of MJF lies in the need for rapid response of single or small batch parts, while manufacturing size can not be too large. The print size of HP 4200 is 380mm*284mm*380mm

The MX-850 synchronous 5-axis control machining center can cut parts with a diameter of 850 mm x 450 mm, while the MX-850 itself is positioned as a medium-sized machining center. Therefore, it is not difficult to see that if the processing plant's customers order small and medium-sized workpieces, and more urgent, that configuration of 3D printing is a good solution.

In addition, Matsuura Machinery is equipped with DyeMansion post-processing equipment to further clean the fixture.