ROTARY INDEX TABLE USED ON MULTI-AXIS MACHINING CENTERS

Growing performance demands in the mechanical manufacturing field have lead to a great development of the machine tools domain, during the past decades, regarding especially the productivity and the manufacturing precision. When equipping a machine tool with an automatic tool changer and an automatic pallet mechanism, the obtained result is a machining center. For single or small series products, multi-axis machining centers fulfill the precision and productivity requirements, through the advantages of a reduced auxiliary time and reduced operating errors. This paper presents a new technical solution of the index table mechanism used on multi-axis machining centers, which significantly helps reduce the auxiliary time in the manufacturing process. The mechanical structure of the table mechanism described in this paper offers the possibility to obtain a very high positioning precision, using a curvic coupling and a hidraulically driven table clamp/unclamp mechanism.