How to preheat a vertical machining center?
The thermal characteristics of CNC vertical machining centers have a significant impact on machining accuracy, accounting for almost half of the machining accuracy. The spindle of the machine tool and the guide rails, screws, and other components used in the XYZ motion axis will all heat up and deform due to load and friction during movement. However, the displacement of the spindle and XYZ motion axis components relative to the worktable ultimately affects the machining accuracy in the thermal deformation error chain.
The difference in machining accuracy between machine tools in long-term shutdown and thermal equilibrium states is significant. The reason for this is that after running for a period of time, the temperature of the spindle and each moving axis of the CNC machine tool remains relatively fixed at a certain level, and as the machining time changes, the thermal accuracy of the CNC machine tool tends to stabilize. This indicates that preheating the spindle and moving parts before machining is very necessary.
However, the warm-up exercise of machine tools is often overlooked or unknown by many factories.
How to preheat the machine tool?
If the machine tool is idle for more than a few days, preheat it for more than 30 minutes before high-density machining; If the idle state is only a few hours, it is recommended to preheat for 5-10 minutes before high-density processing.
The preheating process involves the machine tool participating in the repeated movement of the machining axis for multi axis linkage, such as moving the XYZ axis from the lower left corner to the upper right corner of the coordinate system and repeatedly walking diagonally.
When executing, a macro program can be written on the machine tool to repeatedly perform the preheating action.
After sufficient preheating of the machine tool, the dynamic machine tool can be put into high-density machining production, and you will obtain stable and consistent machining accuracy.
