EMAG Koepfer 160 Gear Hobber

For manufacturers with a keen interest in gear hobbing, EMAG has now introduced its new Koepfer 160 gear hobbing machine. At a recent event at the company’s headquarters in Germany, technical experts gave MTDCNC the complete tour as well as a technical demonstration of what the new Koepfer 160 can do…

The machine can be utilised to manufacture anything from spur gears, sprockets, planetary gears, pinions, worm gears, straight bevel gears and much more. With the machine in full swing producing automotive parts, Joerg Lohmann, Sales Director of EMAG Koepfer GmbH tells MTD: “The part we are machining here is the planetary hobbing of an automotive transmission system. The machine conducts pre-hobbing before grinding. This means the workpiece is hobbed after turning and then it is sent for hardening. After hardening, the part will be ground. For the specific demonstration, the chip-to-chip time is less than nine seconds. Of course, to mass hob so many parts, an efficient automation system is a necessity. In this particular case we have a gantry loading system with a double rotary gripper that exchanges the blanks and parts in less than four seconds.”

The Koepfer 160 incorporates two auxiliary slideways that can have a number of tools such as deburring tools, steady rests for long shafts and much more can be attached for a variety of applications. The machine also has an automatic timing sensor that can synchronise the hob with the gear and then the machine can also do hard re-hobbing (skiving).

The operations on the Koepfer 160 tend to be run dry because the hob can run at higher speeds and feeds, which is credit to a thermodynamic effect. When dry hobbing, there is an extremely high temperature in the chips and this effect is called adiabatic sharing, it reduces the tensile strength of the material due to the heat generation. It allows the chips to be removed more easily.

As well as volume production, the Koepfer 160 is also ideal for low volume production, as Mr Joerg Lohmann continues: “The machine is available with and without automation. We have a huge variety of customers that only machine small batches. The machine can be equipped with quick clamping devices for the main and sub-spindle as well as for hob clamping. All this reduces the set-up times and increases profitability.”

With regard to the CNC control, the touch screen is easy to program and intuitive with customers being asked and guided through the process by the machine CNC. For further details contact EMAG UK.

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