CUBE evo revolutionises tape finishing processes

Precision-machining of wave-shaped components to reduce roughness and friction as well as for structuring and increasing the functional surfaces’ contact area can now be carried out even more efficiently: Thielenhaus Superfinish Innovation offers a new self-loading tape finishing machine for machining shafts, bearing and sealing seats. The innovative CUBE evo is available from the Thielenhaus Swiss subsidiary company as a freely pro-grammable unit and is designed to meet future Industry 4.0 standards.

A program with all the parameters required for the machining process, such as workpiece speed, machining time, oscillation, grinding pressure and tape speed can be stored and loaded for every workpiece that needs to be ma-chined. This makes it possible to index to all tape finisher positions extremely precisely via the controller or manually using the positioning system. The self-explanatory user operation surface with its pull-down menus is ahead of the field in innovation. All settings can be carried out quickly and easily by the operator him- or herself, without special training.

The automatic loading technology reduces the machine’s non-productive time and loading processes to an absolute minimum. With its quickly adjustable tape-finish units, the modular construction guarantees flexible, cost-neutral configuration for the most varied workpieces; in the standard working area, these can have dimensions of up to 200 mm diameter and 800 mm length.

As an option, the new finishing machines can be equipped with a fully-integrated 3-axis handling system, freely programmable via the Siemens’ central control system. It is automatically set up and contained in the compo-nents program. The grippers, tailor-made for the workpiece, have been de-signed as double loading to achieve short changeover times and can be quickly exchanged to adapt to the respective type of workpiece. This ensures fast and faultless changeover times.