Cincinnati Milacron Inc.

John Richard Witzel

Harry Dean Kauffman

Jerry Earl Losey

Merrill E Berchtold

Paul J Weisgerber

A spindle carrier, which is movable vertically by an electric servo motor through a relatively long ball screw, has a substantially constant counterbalance force maintained on it irrespective of whether it is moving up or down. This prevents compression or tension of the ball screw. The counterbalance force is maintained substantially constant through sensing the load on the spindle carrier and using the sensed load to vary the hydraulic pressure applied to a piston within a hydraulic cylinder and connected through a chain to the spindle carrier to apply the counterbalance force.

Counterbalance mechanism for vertically movable means

Bore holes are formed in opposite side walls of a part in alignment with each other by two separate cutting tools in two separate machine tools disposed on opposite sides of the part. One of the machine tools is a master and the other is a slave with the master machine tool being disposed at the position at which it is to form a bore hole in one of the opposite side walls. Then, the slave machine tool is moved so that the longitudinal axis of its spindle is in alignment with the longitudinal axis of the spindle of the master machine tool whereby the two bore holes will be aligned with each other and extend through the entire part. This alignment is accomplished by a laser on a spindle carrier of the master machine tool producing a laser beam in parallel with the longitudinal axis of the spindle of each of the spindle carriers and being received by a laser target on the spindle carrier of the slave machine tool.

Method and apparatus for aligning cutting tools

An apparatus is disclosed for use with an EDM machine for controlling the motion of the tool relative to a workpiece. In one embodiment, during the ON time, low power pulses are applied across the machining gap immediately prior to machining pulses. A gap voltage signal produced in response to the low power pulses is used exclusively as an input to control the tool feed mechanism. In another embodiment, the gap voltage signal produced by a low power pulse is combined with a gap current signal produced by a machining pulse to generate control signals which are used to produce command signals for the tool feed mechanism. Further, these control signals may be used to drive a meter which provides a visual indication of the general condition of the machining gap.

Apparatus for controlling tool feed mechanism on an EDM machine

In an EDM process, a method and apparatus are disclosed for determining the quality of a machining gap by detecting a voltage signal across the gap in response to a low power pulse applied immediately prior to a machining pulse. Upon detecting a first predetermined number of consecutive inferior gap voltage signals in response to corresponding low power pulses the application of low power pulses and machining pulses is terminated for a predetermined period of time. Thereafter, only the low power pulses are applied to the machining gap; and after detecting a second predetermined number of consecutive good gap voltage signals in response to corresponding low power pulses, the machining pulses are reapplied.

Growing community of inventors

Milford, OH, United States of America

John Richard Witzel