Open House Showcases Five-Axis Capabilities, Digital Tools

This August, Hwacheon Machinery held an open house at its Lincolnshire, Illinois, facility near Chicago, where it provided insights into its technology, displaying two new five-axis machine tools, as well as its in-house machine monitoring systems: M-Vision Plus and M-Vision Pro. The company also hosted representatives from FANUC to discuss programming for five-axis machining.

Five-Axis Machines for Large Parts

The event saw the introduction of the Hwacheon D3-5AX and M1-5AX, two five-axis machine tools designed to integrate easily with the company’s own pallet-changing system. The D3 is a trunnion-style five-axis machine capable of both 4+1 and full five-axis machining for large parts. It is the company’s largest five-axis machine, capable of 800 millimeters in X-axis travel and with an 800-millimeter work area. It comes standard with a 12,000-rpm spindle, with options for spindle speeds as high as 24,000 rpm.

The M1, on the other hand, is designed specifically for mold and die shops. The work area has a 300-millimeter diameter, and the spindle speeds are available at either 20,000 or 30,000 rpm. The machine’s cooling systems in both the spindle and frame ensure thermal stability over long machining cycles, which is ideal for mold and die work.

Both machine tools come standard with the company’s Harmony control.

Digital Tools, Tangible Results

The Harmony control uses a touchscreen human-machine interface on FANUC guts. Developed in-house, the control makes monitoring machine functions, simulating toolpaths and programming five-axis work accessible through simple menu options. It uses conversational CAM programming, and it has functions to optimize five-axis feed rates and simulate five-axis toolpaths. The system enables users unfamiliar with programming five-axis work to effectively adapt to five-axis machining, and users who are already used to using a FANUC control for five-axis machines can simply switch the interface to the standard FANUC option.

According to FANUC Aerospace Program Manager Rick Schultz, Hwacheon machines are adept at taking advantage of the control’s five-axis machining features. For example, the Workpiece Setting Error Compensation function enables the machine tool to identify positional errors that can occur during setup and adjust the toolpath to compensate, and the AI Contour Control uses algorithms to optimize toolpaths while taking cutting conditions into account.

“These functions are critical for five-axis machining,” Schultz said in a presentation on programming for five-axis machining, emphasizing that these functions can shorten cycle times and avoid scrapped parts. He also praised Hwacheon machines for taking advantage of these and other features. “Hwacheon is one of the customers using our most current functions. They’re one of the most prepared for five-axis machining.”

In addition to controls, Hwacheon had its M-Vision machine monitoring system on display. M-Vision Plus and M-Vision Pro provide real-time data that can identify spindle utilization and alert users to problems. While both provide machine monitoring, the Pro version enables users to track data remotely, as well as pull up alarms and identify the cause of machine downtime. Visitors to the open house could scan a QR code and automatically download the machine monitoring app, providing them live data for the machine tools on display.