Retrofit restores boring machine to ‘as new'

A retrofit by Starrag Group company Dörries Scharmann of a 30-year-old Wotan Rapid large-capacity borer has restored the machine’s operation to “as good as original” — at half the cost of buying a comparable new machine.

The project also avoided additional costs associated with machine replacement, including excavating and laying new foundations.

Used by press manufacturer Schuler to machine huge gear-wheels and shaft components, the Wotan is fitted with a rotary table for multi-face machining; part of the new specification was that the machine also had to achieve a maximum variation of just 60µm over the entire 10m X axis.

Other upgrades included a new table saddle, plus the replacement of the original single-sided double pinion drive with a new system comprising two ‘electronically tensioned drives’. Starrag has a UK subsidiary in Birmingham (www.starrag.com).