CNC technology utilized for precision positioning

To maintain competitive market edge through the use of precise positioning techniques, US machine tool control specialist CNC Onestop is being helped with advanced CNC systems from NUM. Based in Ohio, but also operating in Toronto, CNC Onestop is a CNC engineering company that works in full CNC, motor and drive retrofits for machine tools, as well as machine rebuilds and troubleshooting.

Its main area of business is in grinding machines – including OD, ID, non-round and punch grinding, as well as thread grinding – that provide sub-micron accuracy. The company’s customer base spans a diverse mix of aerospace, medical, marine, defense and high-tech industries.

According to CNC Onestop’s President, Ven Swaminathan: “We aim to develop solutions for machine tool applications that are deemed impossible by competitors. Many of the grinding machines that we retrofit are required to work to sub-micron accuracies.”

Swaminathan added: “To help achieve this, we need CNC technology with exceptionally precise positioning capabilities. NUM is the leader in this specialized area of CNC and their application support is unparalleled, so we have chosen to standardize on their open architecture hardware and software for all future grinding machine retrofit projects”.

The core of NUM’s cylindrical grinding CNC solutions is a flexible software package known as ProCAM. This features a highly intuitive graphical Human-Machine Interface (HMI) which uses simple conversational style programming.

It is used in conjunction with embedded CNC grinding and dressing cycles, with direct hyperlinks to CAD files or other pertinent grinding production data, to facilitate efficient manufacture of a diverse range of workpieces with a variety of wheel forms. ProCAM software is designed primarily to address the requirements of OD, ID or OD/ID with either a horizontal or vertical machine layout.

NUM’s PC-based ProCAM software can be easily and quickly configured for a variety of machine configurations. The basic configuration has the X-axis or radial direction into the part and the Z-axis or axial along the length of the part. The same X/Z axes can be used to drive the dressing operations, or alternatively the software can also set up to manage a rear mounted independent U/W dressing axis set.

Embedded grinding cycles include OD/ID Plunge/Multi-plunge, Plunge with inclined Axes, Oscillating Plunge/Multi-plunge, Cylinder Traverse, Complex Profile Traverse, Taper Traverse, Oscillating Shoulder, Shoulder Traverse and Shoulder Cylinder Blend.

ProCAM also supports a wide variety of auxiliary grinding functions, including straight and special profile wheels, roller dressing, automatic wheel profiling, in-process dressing, and automatic wheel surface speed calculations.

Steven Schilling, General Manager of NUM Corporation in Illinois, said: “Our ProCAM grinding solutions are based on NUM’s latest-generation Flexium+ CNC platform. This provides machine tool retrofitters and manufacturers with a modular and fully scalable CNC system that is very cost-effective across a wide range of applications. We are currently supplying Flexium+ 8 systems to CNC Onestop, which are extremely flexible and powerful configurations. CNC Onestop’s decision to base its future cylindrical grinding developments on NUM’s CNC products is a great accolade and we wish them every success.”