NAF drives production up a gear with InoFlex

18th September 2014
Posted By : Jacqueline Regnier
NAF drives production up a gear with InoFlex

Neunkirchener Achsenfabrik AG (NAF) has been developing and producing axles and gears for construction, forestry and agricultural machinery manufacturers for over 50 years. The family-owned company has a global customer base and is always searching for production efficiency and high precision solutions. Here, HWR Spanntechnik’s InoFlex power chuck is providing both.

Employing 450 staff at its 18,000 m2 headquarters in Bavaria, Germany, NAF manufactures axles and transfer cases for self-propelled applications for construction, forestry and agriculture machinery. Having built an enviable reputation, the company is now a global leader for powered bogie axles for forestry machinery drives.

Forestry drive-lines for forwarders and harvesters can include transfer cases, planetary rigid axles, planetary bogie axles and portal bogie axles in many variations. A high speed planetary bogie axle or a planetary rigid axle is also produced for forestry trailers.

For construction industry wheel loaders and mobile excavators NAF offers a complete drive-line consisting of transfer cases, planetary steering axles and planetary rigid axles. For articulated dump trucks the company can provide a variety of drive line solutions. These vary from planetary steering axles, planetary drives with integrated self-cooling oil immersed disc brakes, to complete bogie axles.

NAF offers innovative solutions, such as driven planetary steering axles equipped with flanged hydraulic motors and transfer cases, or integrated spur gear drives in the differential of the axle for field mulchers and combine harvesters. For both self-propelled sprayers and self-propelled harvesters the company offers planetary steering, rigid axles and planetary bogie axles.

Clamping castings and flame-cut parts

Many of the components for the drive-lines are irregularly shaped and in the past NAF used conventional 4-jaw chucks as a workholding solution for the machining of castings and flame-cut parts. However, these concentric clamping systems were often pushed to their limits.

“Often, the rigid clamping 4-jaw chucks could not properly hold the irregular shaped raw material securely enough for machining. In these cases we had to prepare the parts by hand on the grinding bench," recalls Klaus Bungeroth, Head of Development at NAF.

This was a very time-consuming and costly process. So, when Klaus Bungeroth learned of the concentrically compensating InoFlex 4-jaw chuck, he instantly realised the advantages of this innovative system. He explains: “We were searching for a power chuck for our CNC machine, which would provide us with more safety and flexibility in our production. The new 4-jaw chuck from HWR meets all these demands."

In the spring of 2014, NAF invested in a 250 mm InoFlex 4-jaw power chuck. This system is a further development from the popular InoFlex manual chuck, and it was developed for highly efficient operation on CNC turning machines. The 4-jaw chuck distinguishes itself through its patented compensating mechanism: Compensation is provided by connecting the diametrically opposed slides with a sliding gate-type gear. Thus the holding forces are distributed equally around the clamped parts so there is less deformation.

Capable of eccentric and compensating clamping, the InoFlex range is available to hold diameters from 160 to 1200 mm. NAF uses an InoFlex chuck with a clamping force of 170 kN, and a metric serration of 1.5 mm x 60°. After two months in the busy production environment Klaus Bungeroth comes to a positive statement: "We can now clamp much more safely, so parts no longer drop out of the machine. Additionally, we are achieving much better roundness results and a high repeat accuracy of 0.015 mm."

As the exclusive UK agent for the HWR range of advanced workholding systems, Thame Workholding has successfully installed the manual version of the InoFlex eccentric and compensating clamping equipment at a number of manufacturing businesses in the UK.

“We are also able to supply the smaller diameter InoFlex power version with the larger diameter chucks coming on stream towards the end of 2014” explains Sales Director, Maurice Day

 


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