THIS WEEK’S HIGHLIGHTS

New flagship range of measuring arms

Eight years after the launch of the first Romer Absolute Arm, Hexagon’s Manufacturing Intelligence division has unveiled the latest Absolute Arm range, complete with a ground-up redesign.

A standout feature of the new Absolute Arm is its modular wrist design that allows both the RS5 laser scanner and pistol grip to be completely removed, facilitating easy probing in tight spaces. When reattached for laser scanning applications, a variety of grip sizes are available to ensure the best fit for every user. The newly developed wrist also features a display screen that allows for measurement result oversight, profile switching and calibration right at the point of measurement, reducing time spent switching attention between the arm and its control computer.
“Over the past eight years we’ve received a lot of positive and constructive customer feedback, and hopefully people will see how this has informed our design,” says Anthony Vianna, product manager for the Absolute Arm range. “Many customers told us they needed to measure in smaller and smaller spaces, like cavities or inside complex fixtures, and it was that sort of direct-from-the-user intelligence that drove us to create the most compact scanning configuration on the market today.”
The new Absolute Arm models are also available in a six-axis version designed for dedicated probing applications. Within this category is the new Absolute Arm Compact, with accuracy now to within just 6 µm. The full Absolute Arm range is available across seven sizes, with measurement radii from 1.2 to 4.5 m, and three levels of accuracy, resulting in 36 unique arm configurations.
For further information www.hexagonmi.com

Maintaining control choice for XYZ heavy-duty VMCs

XYZ Machine Tools’ philosophy of offering ‘what the customer needs’ has led to its Heavy-Duty (HD) range of vertical machining centres being made available with the Heidenhain TNC 620 control.

“We offered Heidenhain as a control option many years ago, but found it a slow seller due in part to the additional cost and complexity of the system,” says Nigel Atherton, managing director at XYZ Machine Tools. “However, with recent changes to the Heidenhain control, such as the addition of touch-screen technology, along with a more modern and compact user interface, we see opportunities that fully justify adding it to our HD series of machines. Our independence as a machine tool supplier means that we are free to adapt our machine range to suit changes in customer demand, such as giving them a choice of control.”
The Heidenhain control option will initially be available on the XYZ 660HD, XYZ 800HD and XYZ 1100HD vertical machining centres. XYZ’s move will allow the company to access business from which it was previously excluded (where Heidenhain controls are popular), such as mould and die and aerospace, as well as in the education market.
“We recognise that control choice is important to customers, and that they tend to be loyal to a particular CNC due to their expertise and familiarity with it,” says Atherton. “Extending our use of Heidenhain controls to the HD series – we already offer Heidenhain on our flagship UMC-5X machine – was a logical step. It was encouraging that before the first machines arrived at our factory we had already received orders for machines with Heidenhain controls fitted, which fully justified our decision to pre-order 50 machines for stock.”
For further information www.xyzmachinetools.com

AZL orders large injection moulder

The Aachen Centre for Integrative Lightweight Production (AZL) at RWTH Aachen University is installing a new Engel injection moulding system.

Engel Deutschland GmbH – in co-operation with the Engel Centre for Lightweight Composite Technologies in Austria – will install the two-component injection moulding system with turning plate and 17,000 kN clamping force in 2019. This machine set-up is the basis for further developments in efficient inline combination technologies using different kinds of polymer performance materials.
AZL’s new Engel injection moulding system will enable innovative combinations of already established fibre-reinforced plastics (FRP) processes and the development of new individual processes. The focus is on increasing resource efficiency in lightweight production, with research addressing multi-material systems, continuous processes, process chains and self-optimising processes.
For further information www.azl-aachen-gmbh.de

€1bn BMW plant

BMW continues to expand its production network in Europe, with a new facility to be built in Hungary, close to the town of Debrecen.

The plant will come at an investment of approximately €1bn, and offer capacity of up to 150,000 units a year and create over 1000 new jobs.
“The BMW Group’s decision to build this new plant reaffirms our perspective for global growth,” says Harald Krüger, chairman of the BMW AG Board of Management. “After significant investments in China, Mexico and the US, we are now strengthening our activities in Europe to maintain a worldwide balance of production between Asia, America and our home continent. Europe is the BMW Group’s largest production location. In 2018 alone we are investing more than €1bn in our German sites to upgrade and prepare them for electric mobility.”
For further information www.bmwgroup.com

BI-MU 2018 fast approaching

The 31st edition of BI-MU, Italy’s most important trade show for machine tools, automation and digital manufacturing technologies is set to take place on 9-13 October in Milan.

This year will see a heavy focus on the world of connectivity, presenting special areas on the IoT, big data, cyber security, cloud computing and augmented reality.
As a natural stage to show the influences between the world of manufacturing systems and digital technologies, through an in-depth overview of the main market trends and productive models generated over the first years of the ‘fourth industrial revolution’, BI-MU 31 will present a renewed technological product range covering all solutions related to the factory of the future. There will be lots of new areas created to transform the trade show into a balanced mix of technological displays, thematic areas, infotainment zones and convention areas.
For further information www.bimu.it