Sketch of EMO Hannover '97 / Ataka Engineering - Kenji Takakura

EMO and Europe tour by Nikkan Industry News Paper

    Sep 12, We flew to Frankfurt with 15 members. It was second visit of myself to EMO.
    Huge area is provided for this show. There are bus services in the site. Gear machines are in #2 building.
    Over 22,000 exhibitors are gathered at this show, what we can see? Newspaper said that High Speed Cutting, Complex Cutting, Dry Cutting, Linear Motor Drive, New type of CNC and Parallel Link Machine.
    We surprised that so many Taiwan makers are exhibited on this show. We guess the business growth of Taiwan is quite high in these years.
    European manufacturer is also so active, we noticed. There are so many things to learn from them, I thought.


EMO Show ! Is this a Experimental Shop?
    I've heard that EMO is a show of new technologies. Really we could see many new things here. One of the best interest in this show is "HOH-600" from Ingersoll (US). There are more than ten machines like this one at EMO.
    This machine is something strange to me as a mechanical engineer. Brochure said that three times faster and three times more rigid than conventional five axes CNC machining center, but most of demonstrations, they cut very small work piece and speed is slow if we compare with Linear Drive Slide.
    Accuracy, I could not believe that it is more accurate than the machine has frame and column. Movements, how can we point out the differences from spindle on the robot hand? Some of those machines are arranged to assembling machine and chamfering machine instead of cutting machine.
    After I've heard that this machine is developed for space machining in the future, I thought I could understand this one. So, this is a future machine!!??
    Anyway, so many people are watching on this machine, I don't know I could really understand this one or not.


　　　　　*** New Challenge in Gear Machines ***

GLEASON's Challenge!
    Gleason Works now have Pfauter besides Hurth in their group.
    They exhibited eight machines at booth to appeal their power marketing.
    Their new technology is Dry-Cutting on Phoenix 450 HC. On the demo, automotive gear with 10 inches diameter was cut in 1.25 min. with Face Hobbing method.
    Big Hobbing machine 400GH, Gear Grinder TAG-400 with loader unit, Pfauter P210 Hobbing machine for Dry-Cutting, P200G is profile grinder, PSA120 is Gear Shaper with loader, and from Hurth, ZH125CNCE Gear Horning and ZEA-4 Debarring machine are exhibited.
OERLIKON's Proposal!
    Klingelnberg Group is another side of big group in the gear industry. Dry-Cutting was also demonstrated with Oerlikon C-28 CNC. 9 inches diameter automotive gear was cut in 1 min. 29 sec.
    From Liebherr-Lorenz, LCC-150 was released which can make hobbing and shaping at the same time in one chucking.



　　　　　*** What's in EMO ***

Gear Machine or Machining Center?
    These days, it is quite difficult to say the difference between gear machines and ordinary cutting machine like machining center.
    Because of computerized machine, mechanical parts are look like no more important. Sanctuary of gear machine is gone, now we should do the same things as ordinary machine like High Speed Cutting, Dry-Cutting, and Complex cutting.
    Point is we should recognize this fact.
Dry-Cutting, is it True?
    Dry-Cutting was all over the EMO including Gleason and Oerlikon.
    This method is not too new. There are not so many difficulties in machine side. Little bit more rigidity is required on the machine and another point is how to collect hot chips quickly in order to avoid heat influence to machine frame.
    Most important point is to find out the right material of tools for the work piece. But how can we expect it without make trials with machine manufacturer. Dry-Cutting is not the one of listed options of machine, user have to do something, otherwise we can not get this sweet fruit, I thought.
    　
Callenge is allways essenctial!
    Every new technology at EMO looks not perfect yet.
    Therefore, there are so many possibilities surrounding the show site. If we can challenge it we may success, on the other hand no challenge means no success.
    That what I felt at EMO Hannover '97.


　　　　　 *** end ***

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