Snapshots from SIMTOS
Big machines were a big part of the 2010 Seoul International Machine Tool Show in South Korea.
Hyundai-Wia’s KBN 135C boring machine is designed to provide power, rigidity and table size for oil, wind power and other large components.
Doosan’s Puma MX3100S turn-mill machine is designed to produce big, complex parts like this blisk shaft in one setup.
The VTC 3040F from Hankook has twin rams allowing the VTL to be set up for both milling and turning operations.
S&T Dynamics demonstrates VTL hard turning capability on its rigid ST 25/35 VC machine.
The Sirius 2500/5AX machine from Hwacheon uses a direct-drive rotary head to enable five-axis machining of contoured surfaces like this large mold.
HNK’s HB-13A boring machine provides the size, power and torque for heavy cutting of large workpieces.
For the precision-turned, small-parts crowd, Nexturn’s NST56 demonstrated multifunction capability offering both cross-slides and a turret.
Finally, here’s a robot that can solve a Rubik’s cube. (A camera in its “belly button” takes photos of an unsolved cube so algorithms can determine the solution.)
In April, I got my second chance to attend SIMTOS—the Seoul International Machine Tool Show—in South Korea. The last time I was at this biennial event was in 2004. The obvious difference between then and now is that the 2010 edition displayed the bigger number of large-scale machine tools. Machine tool builders including Hyundai-Wia, Doosan, Hankook and Hwacheon highlighted equipment such as boring mills, vertical turning centers and multitasking machines engineered to machine sizeable parts for wind power, nuclear and aerospace applications.
