Wind Generates More Machine Tool Sales Energy

Wind Generates More Machine Tool Sales Energy For some builders of heavy-duty machine tools at EMO 2007, the worldwide spread of wind farms has generated up to 30% in new business, reports Mike Page. Ever look at a wind turbine machine? There is a lot of work for heavy duty vertical turning lathes equipped with a mill/drill facility and fixed or moving portal CNC milling/boring machines or machining centres having turning capabilities. Large diameter capacity mill-turn lathes are also finding applications. At the recent EMO 2007 exhibition in Hannover, Germany, commercial director of Soraluce, Feliz Arizaga, said machine tool demand from wind turbine manufacturers is growing at around 30%/year. German machine tool builder, Doerries Scharmann of Moenchengladbach said that the wind turbine industry is accounting for a growing sector in its machine tool orders. Manufacturingtalk also spoke to Unisign, The Netherlands, which reported having several wind turbine manufacturers as customers.The Spanish machine tool builder Soraluce and Unisign build large, fixed or moving portal machining centres.Doerries Scharmann's two plants offer large machining centres or VTLs equipped with milling/drilling/boring spindles. * Soraluce - Soraluce of Bergara said that wind turbine industry wants large vertical turning lathes (VTLs), which are contributing towards Soraluce's anticipated sales turnover of EUR 73-80 million for 2007 compared with EUR 62 million in 2006.oraluce plans a new 2000m2 machine tool assembly hall. Last year's investments included a plant at Goimek, Spain, for producing machine tool components.Soraluce currently delivers 85% of its machine tool output to Europe - of which some 41% are heavy duty milling centres for Germany - and the rest overseas. Just before the EMO 2007 show, Soraluce won orders for eleven machine tools - worth EUR 7.8 million, Recent developments include the FV 5-axis, linear motor powered axis drive milling and boring centre, with rapid traverse speeds up to 60m/min), mainly for machining the larger plastics injection moulds.The machine has a 5-axis machining head and performs roughing, semi-finishing and finishing. * Doerries Scharmann - the company reported a full order book into 2009, with the German market picking up. In addition to the German market, the Scandinavian energy market and the European aerospace market are doing well.Like Soraluce, Doerries Scharmann is also investing further in machine building. For aluminium aerospace parts machining, Doerries Scharmann has developed a novel simultaneous multi-axis machining head. Three linear ball screw systems operating in inverted 'V' cross-sectional layout of parallel axes move gimbals that impart rotational, swivel and linear movements to the head. * Unisign - Unisign Produktie Automatisering is located in Panningen.The company said it has several customers producing components for wind turbines. One company, Brueck, is using a Uniport 8000 gantry-type machining centre with axes movements of 10m x 4.6m x 2m (X, Y and Z respectively) to produce ring components for wind turbines.Brueck also operates a Unicom mill-turn centre - with a swing of 2m diameter - and a Uniport 6000 machining centre, which has a turning function for up to 2.5m diameter. Unisign also mentioned Contermann and Simon, which is using two Uniport 6000 machining centres with turning capabilities.Unisign said that it has several enquiries for machines to produce wind turbine components and is expecting a substantial order from a German energy company for a very large Unicom 6000 machining + turning centre to produce wind turbine components. It would appear that the wind turbine industry is certainly imparting new energy into the heavy-duty machine tool sector.