In the field of new energy vehicle manufacturing, the wheel hub is not only the core component that carries the vehicle body, but its lightweight design and precision machining accuracy directly affect the vehicle's range and driving safety. A leading manufacturer of new energy vehicle wheels once faced a production bottleneck: for 18-22 inch aluminum alloy wheels, traditional processing requires three machines to complete turning, milling, and drilling in sequence, with a single piece processing cycle of up to 60 minutes. Due to multiple clamping, the wheel end face runout error exceeds 0.05mm, and the dynamic balance deviation rate reaches 7%. At the same time, burrs are prone to occur during high-speed cutting of aluminum alloy, and additional labor costs of 15% are required for subsequent polishing processes.
Customer usage site
To overcome this dilemma, the company introduced the VTC80A CNC vertical turning center from Taiyun CNC machine tool, and built an integrated machining system with "single machine multi energy". The equipment adopts aviation grade cast iron bed and four point support structure, and the rigidity distribution is optimized through finite element analysis. The vibration reduction performance is 60% higher than the industry standard, and it can stably withstand the 12kN radial cutting force during high-speed cutting of aluminum alloy; Equipped with FANUC 31i-B5 CNC system and fully closed-loop control of grating ruler, it achieves ± 0.01mm positioning accuracy and ± 0.007mm repeated positioning accuracy, accurately matching the tolerance requirements of wheel hub and wheel rim curvature of ± 0.02mm. In response to the adhesive properties of aluminum alloy cutting tools, the equipment spindle adopts an oil mist lubrication system, combined with ceramic coated cutting tools, effectively suppressing the formation of chip deposits.
Customized wheel hub fixture
In terms of technological innovation, the equipment has achieved a breakthrough of "completing the entire process in one clamping": the integrated turning spindle (maximum speed of 1000r/min) and 8-station servo tool holder (tool change time of 1.2 seconds) can continuously complete the outer circle turning, bolt hole drilling, and chamfering of wheel hub blanks. By installing an AI cutting parameter optimization system, the equipment can adjust the feed rate (80-150mm/min) and spindle speed in real time according to the aluminum alloy material (such as 6061-T6), so that the surface roughness of the wheel hub can be stably controlled at Ra0.8 μ m, without the need for subsequent polishing to meet the pre-treatment requirements for spraying; For different sizes of wheels, the equipment can switch processing parameters with one click through the program, reducing the changeover time from traditional 2 hours to 15 minutes.
The implementation results far exceeded expectations: the single piece processing cycle was compressed from 60 minutes to 35 minutes, and the daily production capacity was increased from 200 sets to 380 sets; The wheel rim end face runout error is stably controlled at ≤ 0.03mm, and the dynamic balance deviation rate is reduced from 7% to 0.8%, meeting the ISO 1940-1 G2.5 standard; After canceling the manual polishing process, the manufacturing cost of a single wheel hub decreased by 12%, and the tool life was extended by 40% due to parameter optimization. The IoT module of the device can collect 12 key data such as cutting force and spindle temperature in real time. Combined with predictive maintenance algorithms, it can increase the comprehensive utilization rate of the device from 82% to 95% and reduce annual downtime by 320 hours.
VTC80A has completely changed our production mode. ”The manufacturing director of the company said, 'Now we can meet the strict requirements of new energy vehicles for wheel hub lightweighting (wall thickness control accuracy ± 0.1mm), and also meet the rapid production needs of multiple vehicle models, which has won us long-term orders from mainstream car companies.'. ”This case confirms that CNC vertical lathes have become the core equipment for breaking through the dual bottlenecks of precision and efficiency in the mass production of new energy vehicle wheels through collaborative innovation of "hardware rigidity+process integration+intelligent control".
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