Today the trend is away from standard two-axis CNC lathes toward machines with driven tooling and multi-axis functionality - as reflected by a builder's advances, including Y-axis machines.

The European headquarters and manufacturing facility of Yamazaki Mazak U.K. in Worcester is reaping the benefits of having a versatile manufacturing plant. Yamazaki Mazak's foresight, in investing in state-of-the-art equipment when the plant was established, along with the recent upgrading of the manufacturing facility, is allowing the company to exploit the changing trends in machine tool purchase, particularly in lathe production.

Today the trend is away from standard two-axis CNC lathes toward machines with driven tooling and multi-axis functionality.

A few years ago this type of machine only accounted for 23 per cent of lathe output from Worcester, it is now 73 per cent, with the bulk of production destined to satisfy the requirements of the UK, European and Middle Eastern markets.

At the core of this production are the UK-designed Quickturn Nexus 200 and 250 MY and MSY lathes.

These machines are Y-axis variants of the successful Nexus range and bring with them some significant performance increases over the preceding SuperQuickTurn models.

In particular, rapid traverse in the Y-axis has increased from 12 to 21m/min, milling spindle power has increased from 3.7 to 5.5kW, the maximum machining diameter is now 380mm - an increase of 80mm, and the main spindle has also benefited by being updated to a 26kW, 5000 rev/min when used in conjunction with an 8in chuck.

The latter is a result of the use of advanced integral spindle/motor technology that makes the Quickturn Nexus ideal for a wide range of applications including heavy-duty cutting at low speeds to high speed machining of aluminium and other non-ferrous materials.

Rotary tools can be located in any of the turrets 12 positions and are driven by a 5.5kW/4500 rev/min motor.

In addition to the Y-axis the MSY variant is also provided with a second, 7.5kW/6000 revs/min, spindle equipped with several productivity enhancing features.

For example, during the transfer of a workpiece from the main spindle, the thrust force of the second headstock is reduced to ensure positive seating of the workpiece in the chuck.

Furthermore, components can be accurately and automatically orientated in-phase to deliver smooth and continuous operation.

On the MY machines this second spindle is replaced by a numerically controlled electric tailstock.

The advantages of this particular unit is that it provides accurate set-up, even where low thrust force is required and set-up is simplified due to the use of a servo motor.

One key benefit, though, is the elimination of manual adjustment when workpiece lengths change.

Control is provided by the Mazatrol Fusion 640T Nexus CNC unit that features the easy-to-use Mazatrol conversational programming format.

As a result programming time and program length are considerably reduced and editing of existing programs is simplified.