Chinese 
Task
T W Ward CNC Machinery Ltd (Ward CNC), A UK Distributor of overseas manufactured machine tools, needed to automate the opening and closing of large heavy guard doors on a Hankook vertical boring and turning machine over a distance of 2.5m to meet the requirements of the end user. The existing doors were manually operated and by nature of their size and design could only be opened slowly.
Solution
Given the availability of an air supply to the machine, a 海普克(HEPCO) Powerslide was seen as the simplest and most cost effective option, especially as the doors would always be opened to the extremeties of their travel with no requirement to accurately stop mid stroke.
Whilst the 海普克(HEPCO) Power Slide comes with fitted guidance system it is sometimes used purely as an actuator. In the case of the machine its function was purely to provide the driving force to open and close the doors. The weight of the doors is taken on the existing sliding system fitted within the machine. The strong aluminium structure with fitted GV3 flat slide guidance system provides a suitably rigid structure over the 2.65m length. In turn this allows the Powerslide to be bolted straight to the machine.
As the doors were only being opened and closed at a slow travel speed, slow speed grease was fitted within the rodless cylinder to ensure that the motion remains smooth over the whole travel length. This provides good control over the guard door movement and created a compact solution in keeping with the general machine design of the Hankook VTL that also features c axis and driven tooling.
Scope of Supply
海普克(HEPCO) Power Slide HPS40/60-2650 with slow speed grease.
Result
An easy modification to a ‘standard’ machine tool at minimal cost that provided the customer with an automated door opening solution with no maintenance.
