Development of movable machine tool with multi spindles and axes (concept of development and performance evaluation)

The shortening of the lead time in all aspects from metal mold design to manufacture is strongly required together with cost reduction. Especially in the automotive sector, there are metal mold materials of 2.4 m × 4.8 m in size with very heavy weights of up to 20 tons. When processing these large metal molds, blank materials are put on a large table of machine tool, and machined under the cutting condition of large house power and low spindle rotation. To cope with the situation, the study proposes a multi spindles and axes metal mold processing machine to save space and improve the machining efficiency. The proposed machine tool has a range of 6 to 9 spindle heads allowing a variety of different curved surfaces to be processed at the same time. It is shown that the machine tool has the potential of shortening processing time less than half of the conventional one.