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The OMG CNC

By Rain Noe - June 13, 2012

in Digital Fabrication

If this large-scale CNC machine had been built in America we'd be using it to carve swimming pools and skateparks, because that's how we roll. But the higher-ups at Germany's EEW Protec mechanical engineering firm are using it for more sensible things, like carving one-piece molds for 50-meter turbine blades.

The machine has an X-axis of 151 meters which, despite the metric, sounds more like an American dimension to me. Because that's what we do over here. A neighboring firm makes one first with an X-axis of 150 meters, then we add an extra meter and casually bring it up during the inter-company softball game. "No no, that's great, Bob," we'd say. "I'm sure 150 meters is big enough for the projects you guys work on. But ours maxes out at, you know, 151 or 152."

You may notice that there's a guy standing in the mold. He's probably German, so I can't tell you what he's doing in there. If he was American, I could tell you that without a doubt, he's a bored engineer patiently playing a dangerous game of CNC chicken. Because that's how we...ah, you get the idea.

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goodmaei

12 years ago

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@Scott -- search for "fiber placement" or "tape laying" -- with swappable heads, the technology exists to cut a mold and lay carbon fiber right into it to make a hull. Not sure if you'll ever see it though -- the differences in the machine requirements (stiffness, controls, etc) make it cheaper not to combine metal cutting and fiber placement.

The biggest mill I've seen stateside is in Rockford, IL -- Ingersoll Machine tools has had their Masterspeed Gantry running for years, but it has *just* 36m of X-axis travel -- with better accuracy, and was also used in Boeing development if I remember correctly.

MAG-IAS lists the travel on a few of their machines as "unlimited, in Xm increments" - not sure what's been built, but they can just keep adding more rail to hit 151m, 152m....

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James

12 years ago

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Janicki Industries has been using large scale CNC for some time. They cut the large tools that make the composite fuselage for the Boeing Dreamliner.
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dongzo

12 years ago

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Nice to see it used to make something worthwhile.
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Scott

12 years ago

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I always wondered what a CNC process for making a single mold for a huge fiberglass boat would be like.

Instead of piecing together a bunch of small panels and coating it all, just going nuts on a huge assembly of foam.

I'd love to see the concept of CNC subtractive processes combined with CNC additive processes on a large scale; imagine a machine which could create a one-piece composite ship from the ground up out of metal and polymers and fibers.
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Chris

12 years ago

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This is me reading this article: "Oh yes, yes, neat... mm hmmm CNC, cool, well I'm not sure HOLY CRAP THAT'S A PERSON"
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