Today, the Gehring Group is one of the global market leaders in precision machining. The plant manufacturer designs special horizontal machines for holes up to 15 metres and transfer lines for the production of engine blocks. These machines not only perform honing, but also other work steps such as scooping out cooling lubricant residues and cleaning. All with a high throughput: With cycle times of almost always less than one minute, high availability requirements must be met in 24/7 operation.
As users today want the greatest possible flexibility, the transfer lines in particular have changed. The motors are getting smaller, the product life cycles shorter. Individual machine modules that have to be connected via gantry loaders are being built as a priority.
Gehring expanded its business area in 2014 to also offer such gantry loaders. Today, the plant manufacturer offers a modular system for gantries that enables the combination of different slides, vertical axes, loading systems and grippers.
However, the energy supply of these gantries posed a major challenge: a modular machine for honing the crankshaft bore can be up to 8 metres long. The cylinder modules take up 2.60 metres and, for reasons of accessibility, a space of 3 metres is required between each one. This means that the gantries manufactured to date - and therefore the travel paths of the energy chain - are 20 to 33 metres long. The load is also impressive: in a current project, the gantry is travelling at 3 m/s and an acceleration of 7 m/s2. However, gantries have also been built for 10 m/s, which are used in a crash test rig.