Emre Ayaroglu - 7th Week Unanswered

Power tooling

Turning centres, like any lathe, normally feed a stationary tool into the rotating workpiece. This is satisfactory for components that are circular about their rotational axis or if holes are required along the machine’s rotational centre-line. However, if features that cannot be produced by such relative motion are required, then, after all turning operations are completed, it is necessary for the part to pass to other forms of machine tool, such as a milling machine or drill. With the advent of power tooling, these separate operations can often now be avoided. A power tool, as its name implies, is tooling that has its own power supply, which enables it to rotate independently of the main rotational axis of the machine tool. With the component still clamped in themachine’s chuck, but of course not rotating, the turning centre can then be programmed to bring in suchpower tooling to any required position relative to the workpiece. In this way machining radial holes, flats, etc.is possible, and even cam-type profiles can be produced by controlling precision feed in the C-axis relative to movement of the power tool in the x-axis. In many cases, by judicious planning, quite complex parts can be completed entirely on the turning centre.This avoids the time and cost of setting up a succession of secondary machines and the queuing delays that inevitably occur as batches of parts pass from one machine tool to another. Thus, productivity can be dramatically increased with a modest capital outlay in power tooling monitoring (Waters F., Fundamentals of Manufacturing for Engineers, p. 259).

Powder rolling

It is possible to produce rolled metal strip commercially by the PM. The metal powder, instead of be ingpoured into a die, is continuously fed into a rolling mill, which then produces a preform in the form of an endless strip. The strip next passes through a sintering oven, and is then rerolled (a form of continuous coming), to produce the final strip material . This process is particularly attractive for the production of small quantities of special metal mixes and for metals such as stainless steel that require a number of annealing steps if rolled from wrought material monitoring (Waters F., Fundamentals of Manufacturing for Engineers, p. 180).