A new lathe for La Meccanica

For a company such as La Meccanica, which has customer satisfaction as its main goal, finding high-quality and efficient solutions for the production of machines and systems for the biomass and animal feed sector is an everyday challenge. The company has recently focused on improving the dies of small to medium-sized machines – with an internal diameter from 400 to 700mm – with the main aim of speeding up the production of systems and further increasing quality. After a thorough analysis, begun at the end of 2012, of the possibilities, we chose a lathe that is able to optimise all the critical points of this type of production in order to:

- reduce setup time: multi-pallets and a tool magazine with a larger capacity;

- allow processing with a high co-efficient of swarf removal, a high sending speed and a high cutting speed: a high-power main chuck and a mechanically sound structure;

- ensure complete processing of pieces, lathe turning, threading and milling: motor-driven tools to handle the chuck spindle as an interpolated axis;

- optimise setting times: a next generation control system with setting and graphic simulation options on the machine, in line with La Meccanica’s philosophy of “do it right the first time”. After a detailed, yet little satisfying, search for solutions among manufacturers of standard machine tools (the imposed limits were often unacceptable: lack of multi-pallets, warehouses too small, reduced power, etc.), La Meccanica found that the Varese-based company Castek would be the ideal partner for this ambitious project.

The project started with a Carnaghi ATF lathe of the 1970s, to which a cast iron mechanical structure with oversized thicknesses and dimensions and next generation Siemens SL line electronic systems were applied, with a special focus on energy efficiency.

In May 2014, the lathe, already considered top of the range in its category, was completed. The main features of the machine are as follows:

- main chuck spindle with 60kW power up to 400 rpm, nominal working diameter of 1000 mm;

- 2-position pallet change with 2 x 700mm diameter platforms, with rapid change in 20 seconds;

- tool magazine with 44 tools in a vertical tower configuration;

- 250x250 motor-driven ram with 22kW of power at 2500 rpm