Lights-Out Hobbing Performance
IPG runs the SH210 hobber unattended to boost overnight output
For those responsible for running a precision gear shop these days, sleep can be hard to come by. Most are trying to do more with less, particularly the short supply of skilled machine operators who make these shops tick. But Illinois Pulley & Gear’s General Manager Richard Wolter reportedly sleeps like a baby, knowing that when he arrives at his factory in Schaumburg, IL, bright and early every morning, hundreds of high-quality, made-to-order spur gears, pinions and IPG’s bread and butter—tight-tolerance timing pulleys—will have been hobbed overnight, deburred and neatly stacked. Better yet, it’s all done on a productive late-model vertical hobbing machine that’s proven reliable enough to leave it running completely unattended throughout the night, thus adding a much-needed 2nd and 3rd shift without the added cost of a skilled operator—and the hiring angst that goes with it.
It’s the Hobber They Always Wanted—But Never Heard Of
Wolter and his team weren’t considering an SMG SH210 CNC Vertical Hobbing Machine when they went to the 2021 Gear Expo to kick the tires on a new hobber they hoped could replace several manual hobbing machines and add capacity to their burgeoning business. Despite SMG’s excellent reputation in its home country of South Korea and a widespread customer base of big-name OEMs throughout Asia, the brand at the time was virtually unknown in North America and had just arrived via US distribution partner Machine Tool Builders Inc. (MTB). Imagine the IPG team’s surprise when, after first considering all the usual hobber brands, they found the “machine of their dreams” at the MTB booth.
“MTB’s Ken Flowers and John Waxler put the SMG SH210 show machine through its paces, and we saw right away that it checked all the boxes,” recalls Wolter. “I particularly liked the fact that it was a machine with full boxway construction, which told us it was well built and could deliver the exceptional hobbing rigidity we were looking for.”
According to Wolter, the SH also came equipped with additional bells and whistles that he wouldn’t have expected in a machine priced at a deep discount as compared with the better-known machines in the 210 mm gear diameter size range. “We could see right away the throughput potential for a machine equipped with a ring loader for automatic workpiece handling, along with an on-board chamfering/deburring device,” says Wolter. “These features, coupled with its inherently robust design, very competitive feeds and speeds, and even its unusually long Z-axis vertical slide travel that came standard, made for the perfect fit for our very diverse array of timing pulleys and precision gears.”
Four Times Faster, with Fewer Operators
Wolter says the SH210 exceeded expectations right out of the box, and the company has never looked back. The new machine immediately replaced two manual hobbing machines, doing the work that once took five 8-hour days in just two. Furthermore, the SH210’s 4-station ring loader automated load/unload and eliminated all the burdensome non-productive time and operator wear and tear that previously existed. And since the chamfering/deburring process could be performed right on the machine simultaneously with hobbing, the additional time needed for operators to manually unload, transport and set up for this additional operation downstream was eliminated. “Also, speeding changeover and contributing to workpiece accuracy and repeatability was the use of high precision collets that make changeover part to part much faster as compared to arbors used on the older machines, which necessitated a lot of dialing in and operator expertise,” explains Wolter. “The SMG collet is inherently much more accurate, with a tapered design that essentially reduces runout to a small fraction of what could be achieved previously and without any manual adjustment by the operator.”
Hobbing Lights Out and Unattended
With the SMG SH210 now firmly entrenched as IPG’s hobbing workhorse, operating with remarkable reliability, dependably holding ‘size’ and, as Wolter says, “Delivering aggressive feed rates and appetite for more…”—a lightbulb went on at IPG. By coupling the SH210 to the Halter LoadAssistant robotics system IPG already had in-house, it would now be possible to run the hobber productively around the clock and completely unattended overnight. “Halter confirmed that we could easily move and integrate our existing LoadAssistant robotics system with the SH210,” says Wolter. “It’s plug-and-play; the robotics sits close to the SH210, such that workpiece blanks already loaded into the Halter’s integrated palletized stacker storage are loaded via its FANUC 6-axis robot arm directly into the SH210’s ring loader. Then the process is reversed to unload finished workpieces back to the Halter’s pallet storage. The system’s been running like clockwork ever since.”
