Sunnen SHDD-4500 deep hole drilling machine has been a game-changer

Midwest Precision Manufacturing’s Sunnen SHDD-4500 deep hole drilling machine has been a game-changer in the company’s work since its introduction in December 2020. This drilling machine can drill holes with inner diameters between 0.8 and 5.0 inches. It does all this with a high level of accuracy and with minimal or negligible hole drift.

It is hard to tell the entrance and the end when you look at parts drilled using this machine. According to Midwest, this machine also reduced their cycle times and streamlined hole drilling programming compared to the rest of their drilling machines.

The main category of drilling jobs that Midwest’s shop does include deep hole drilling, precision gun drilling and precision honing for customers in different industries, including oil and gas, die casting, and medical. Midwest has reported a significant drop in lead times since they started using this machine in 2020.

To make this possible, Midwest had to play a vital role in developing this machine. They tested the mechanical reliability of its vibration dampers and chip conveyors to ensure the final product supports the common workpieces drilled at Midwest’s shop. Some of these workpieces include Inconel, titanium, 4140 and 8620 steel.

Older machines required a good level of expertise before one could operate them. This needed the shop to spend more time training new operators on safely and effectively running the machine. However, with the Sunnen SHDD-4500, the machine is streamlined by enabling the control to save for individual part numbers’ speeds and feeds to be accessible by any operated via the drop-down menus.

This made it much easier for new operators to get started and take advantage of the knowledge of the more experienced operators who knew the right feeds and speeds to be set for the various parts.

Besides the accuracy, the Sunnen SHDD-4500 is pretty stable. It uses servo-driven ball screws for the tool feed, leading to more precise positioning. These ball screws also lengthen the tool’s service life more than the old rack and pinion system. As a result, the machine is able to drill parts of up to 4m lengths and a maximum diameter of 508mm with insignificant hole drift.

It also supports between 19 to 127 mm diameters for solid drilling. Despite supporting a wide range of diameters, this machine maintains close tolerances on hole size and drift. The hole size and drift tolerances are ±0.127 mm and 0.0254 mm per inch drilled.

Sunnen SHDD-4500 level of accuracy is above Midwest’s threshold and also led to an increase in speeds and feeds 20-30% for all the pieces drilled with this machine. In the end, this has led to a significant drop in lead times despite the high demand.

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