Okuma's Intelligent Technology: Thermo-Friendly Concept (2015)

http://www.okuma.com/americas
At Okuma, we don't fight thermal growth; we work with it. Thermo-Friendly Concept helps improve quality, save time and reduce the incidence of waste product by controlling the "uncontrollable."

Okuma's Thermo-Friendly Concept combines control technology and machine design to both minimize the amount of heat generated and deal with the heat that cannot be eliminated. Coupled with extremely accurate thermal deformation compensation, the benefit is unrivaled dimensional stability over long, continuous runs. You no longer waste time and money warming machines up, thus requiring manual adjustments for temperature changes.

Machine Design—With simple machine designs and construction that equalize ambient temperatures, deformation is predictable and complex torsion or tilting is controlled.

Control Technology—Okuma's Thermal Active Stabilizer has two components: Spindle (TAS-S) and Construction (TAS-C).

TAS-S considers not only spindle temperature information but also spindle rotation, spindle speed changes, and spindle stoppage. The result is that deformation of the spindle and Z-axis are accurately controlled.

TAS-C is based on machine thermal characteristics. With appropriately placed temperature sensors and feed axis position data TAS-C will predict and accurately control thermal deformation in machine construction when ambient temperatures change.

The Thermo-Friendly Concept Difference

-No need for the CNC machine warm-up operation -Eliminates manual adjustments by the operator to compensate for temperature changes

-Saves time—improves productivity

-Saves money—reduced energy usage and labor (time) costs

-Enables the machine to cut submicron-precise surfaces

-Enables durable, high-precision manufacturing