Power and torque

High torque is necessary to perform heavy cutting. But why? Why not only focus on spindle power and spindle speed?

Let’s assume we need to carry a 25kg suitcase up the stairs to the third floor. An athlete will do it by going up the stairs at once. Somebody less fit will have to stop every few steps to catch his breath. At the end they will both achieve the same result but not in the same time. We can say that they both have the capacity to do the work (torque) but only one of them has enough strength (power) to get it done quickly.

In our everyday life we can often hear about torque and engine power when discussing a car engine performance. Again, the torque determines the vehicle’s capability to perform work, the power determines how quickly that work can be performed. Higher torque means better acceleration, whereas higher power means better speed. In other words, torque is the force you feel pushing you back in your seat on acceleration, while engine power is the speed achieved at the end of that acceleration.

Back to the machine tools high torque and high power need to be combined to create a heavy duty machine tool.

If we have high torque but relatively low power the machining takes several times more than it could with the appropriate power. If we have available low torque but high spindle power the cutter immediately stops when touching the workpiece as it is not capable to perform the necessary machining.  We want both: high torque and high power to be sure we can do the expected machining and to do it fast.

To combine these two parameters: high torque and high power we are manufacturing our unique gearboxes. To transfer the high power to high torque on the spindle we make the gearboxes from grey cast iron and install inside the first class components (INA, SKF, FAG bearings). The gears are verified with Finite Elements Method to choose the right gear module to transfer the big load.

The higher the torque is the bigger gear module is needed. As result the big gear module leads us to a big size of the gearbox.

To offer high torque it’s not enough to check only the spindle drive characteristic.

The complete design of the machine tool needs to be prepared to transfer this big torque. In DTI Tech Academy we want to present the key design requirements to create a heavy duty machine tool.


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