Posted to News on 17th May 2012, 12:24
Rotary stage with integrated collet chucks and direct drive
Aerotech's CCS series rotary stages (patent pending) with integrated captured collet chucks provide automated material handling capability for a wide range of materials and applications. Collet chucks used with the CCS family accept C-, D- or Levin-style collets that are readily available from machine-tool component suppliers in sizes supporting tube diameters from 0.1mm to 27mm. These collets provide outstanding run-out characteristics for applications requiring high-precision gripping of tubular material.
CCS features a collet-chuck design that allows work-piece advance without manual realignment to compensate for axial tube motion during clamp/unclamp cycles. By moving the taper around the collet instead of drawing the collet into the taper, axial motion of the work piece is significantly reduced, eliminating the need for part re-registration after tube advancement and increasing system throughput.
The CCS family is designed with mounting features on the housing to support customer-supplied wet-cutting accessories. In addition, the stage will tolerate moderate fluid leakage into the aperture, which is inevitable during wet-cutting operations. These features help to prevent encoder contamination and collet-chuck failure to minimise machine downtime.
The CCS series uses direct-drive brushless motor technology to maximise positioning performance. Direct-drive technology is optimised for 24/7 production environments, with no brushes to replace and no gear trains or belts to maintain. Direct-drive also provides quicker acceleration and higher top speeds than gear- or belt-driven mechanisms, yielding higher total overall throughput.
The low maintenance, high-throughput characteristics of the CCS coupled with the integral material handling capability are claimed to provide the lowest total cost of ownership when compared with component-level systems, and make this stage a useful addition to the production floor.
To find out more about the CCS series rotary stages from Aerotech, visit the website at www.aerotech.com.
