Fermat's latest includes drilling, milling, turning, grinding and hardening

The 5-axis Gantry Center allows for machining of large workpieces from five sides.

Fermat, a manufacturer of horizontal boring mills, has developed its latest multitasking machine. The 5-axis Gantry Center allows for machining of large workpieces from five sides with a combination of operations including drilling, milling, turning, grinding and laser hardening. Fermat has installed the machine at its Lipnik, Czech Republic, facility. The machine is designed for power machining with high rapid traverse.

The machine boasts significant productivity enhancements.  It is able to perform various manufacturing operations without needing to move the part or manual intervention. The Gantry Center demonstrates its multiple workflow benefits, which include an overall reduced manufacturing cycle, decreased setup time and a smaller footprint. Additional enhancements include improved rigidity and increased ram stability secured by the box-in-box design of the cross-rail or reduced floor space.

This multitasking machine can essentially replace four standalone machines, for example a Gantry milling machine, a grinder, a vertical lathe and hardening equipment.

Idle time accounts for major production time consumption with setup time, logistics between machines, measuring and inspection, etc. The multitasking machine reduces the idle time to a minimum. There are further savings of manufacturing and warehouse space, logistics cost between machines including warehousing and operative storage and cost savings of the quantity of the required clamping devices.

The machine offers a movable gantry column slide size, which ensure rigidity of the movable gantry (length 3750mm, width 1900 mm). The rapid traverse in axis X, Y is up to 40.000 mm/min, shortening production time. The automatic exchangeable milling and grinding heads provides added versatility, with the milling head enabled for roughing and finishing operations.

The ram has a working spindle with Ø160mm and travel distance of 1000mm.

The machine is controlled by a SIEMENS SINUMERIK 840D SL control system and is equipped with automatically removable heads which increase machine technology utilization. Automatic tool change is done by a KUKA robot for up to 140 tools.

All of these enhancements and operations increase productivity and reduce production costs. By using the multitasking operations, savings can be substantial.

For more information, visit

www.fermatmachinery.com and the exclusive Canadian distributor, www.tosamerica.com.