The most important challenges in the manufacturing technology for medical and dental engineering components are ultra-high precision, complex geometry, materials that are difficult to cut and a high level of productivity - for parts with extremely small batch sizes. These requirements can be fulfilled on both cutting and milling centres, depending on the geometry of the parts. The latter can even start with bar material!
Milling can also take place on turning centres - and vice-versa. Even if the range of parts that can be covered by both types of machine is continuously increasing in size, there will always be parts that are clearly predestined for one of the two types of machine. Tornos/Almac has acquired a respectable market position in the last few years with its single and multi-spindle machines for manufacturing "difficult to cut" components in the medical and dental engineering areas, and also by developing medical engineering-specific machining processes: It is the market leader in Europe, and one of the top three on the global market with more than 300 medical engineering customers. A quarter of Tornos/Almac’s turnover is now achieved with medical engineering customers.
New FB 1005 Designed to guarantee precision milling in stiff steel as well as noble metals, the FB machine has an X slide guided on prestressed rails and moved by a ballscrew. The X slide supports the vertical Y axis formed of a solid cast iron prism, on which a rectangular sleeve moves. Guided on 4 prestressed rails, this is also moved by a ballscrew and allows a unit equipped with frontal, lateral or vertical spindles to be fitted.
The first customers for the Almac FB 1005 were watchmakers. Today, thanks to the collaboration and synergies created by integrating Almac in the Tornos sales network, we have seen the bar mill take on new tasks in new market segments. The machine has proven to be particularly suited to a wide range of medical applications, notably in the dental industry where it can be used to create implants or even root implants in PEEK. The design of the machine allows for a very short swarf to swarf time, with a quick and user-friendly set-up; this is complemented by a B axis which allows angular milling operations to be carried out in total freedom. This functionality is particularly effective for creating angled types of implants.
To be discovered at Medisiams (we will come back later on this new machine).
Almac SA 2300 La Chaux-de-Fonds 032 925 35 50 info@almac.ch www.almac.ch
