Machining centre manufacturer Brother has announced that it is now offering its M200X3 five-axis mill-turn model, as well as two other 30-taper machines in its range, with the factory-fitted option of a robotic workpiece magazine.
Sole sales and service agent for the UK and Irish markets is
Whitehouse Machine Tools Ltd, which has a cell available for demonstration at its Kenilworth showroom.
Although of standard configuration, the BV7 stocker is flexible enough to be adapted to suit a manufacturer’s automation needs, offering ‘a greater capability for loading and unloading individual parts than a simple cobot, while avoiding the complexity of a fully-fledged storage and retrieval system for machine pallets, which requires more space’.
The vertically oriented robotic workpiece stocker is very compact and can be located at either the left- or right hand-side of a machine. For holding billets and machined workpieces, 10 trays measuring up to 470 x 300 x 135mm may be easily inserted and extracted manually, each weighing a maximum of 25kg.
The tray that is to be machined next is simply selected by push buttons on the side of the unit. Any number of components can populate each tray ‘to suit the requirements of the user’.
The integral robot undertaking the loading and unloading of the individual workpieces has four CNC axes — three rotational and one linear (into and out of the machine via an automatic door). The robot has twin grippers, with the end effectors at right angles to each other.
They load and unload parts into and out of a pneumatically actuated or hydraulically actuated fixture on the rotary table, which in turn is mounted on a swivelling trunnion. The automation unit is pre-connected to the machine control, eliminating the need for additional wiring. Programming of the robot movements is either by a teach pendant or using PC software running Brother’s ‘BASIC’ programming language.
The M200X3 machine itself is compact, occupying a footprint of less than 1.3 x 3.9m yet offering a work envelope of 200 x 440 x 305mm. High levels of productivity are ensured by 50m/min rapids, a 16,000rev/min BIG Plus spindle, and an integral tool magazine with 22 cutters.