Starrag has announced the second – and larger capacity – member of its new Heckert range with the launch of the T55 five-axis horizontal machining centre for the multi-tasking and complete machining of workpieces weighing up to 700kgs.

The machine can perform single set-up turning, milling, drilling, gearcutting/skiving and pointing to accuracies down to 3µm due to the interaction between its temperature- and vibration-stable mineral cast machine bed and the double symmetrically-mounted rotary drive unit.

Drive elements such as planet carriers and wheel hub drives for commercial vehicles, agricultural machinery and industrial applications are typical applications, says Starrag.

With pallets of 500 x 630mm and X, Y and Z axes travels of 850, 1,020 and 1,000mm respectively, the T55 is of compact, robust design and has a low-vibration rotary drive unit specially designed for turning operations — plus a highly dynamic main 72kW spindle rated at 15,000rev/min and 292Nm. Acceleration rates are up to 10m/sec² and rapid traverse is 80m/min. The NC rotating table is rated at 900rev/min and the HSK-T100 toolholder also encourages high chip removal rates.

While the T55 can machine components with a workpiece contour of 900mm, chip-to-chip time is only 4.3sec and pallet change time is 14.5sec. Like its smaller stablemate (the T45), the new T55 is ergonomic, and easy and reliable to operate, and workpiece loading is easily automated by pallet storage units or robots.

The success of a two-T45 machine cell with robot load/unload saw a drive manufacturer double productivity, halve overall machine footprint and reduce tool and handling costs by 40% could easily be mirrored by the T55 on larger workpieces, such as planet carriers or wheel hub drives, suggests Starrag.