«OKB MIKRON» revives machine-tool building

The engineers of OKB Mikron have long faced the need to increase the resource of Soviet equipment and modern machinery. Like many other companies, the company had to purchase a five-axis machining center made in Japan. 
10 years ago the idea of the orbital machine tool building project appeared in the company. The realization of the conceived project becomes possible with the maximum use of the advantages of the currently available computerized equipment control systems, for which the movement along curvilinear and rectilinear trajectories is essentially the same task. This means that straight guideways are not necessarily required on machine tools. This has led experts to realize that any rectilinear motion can be obtained through the rotation of rotary tables mounted on top of each other, which in turn have a much greater degree of protection against wear due to their design. Therefore, metal cutting equipment can have no linear guides and still produce machining along any trajectories, including rectilinear ones. 
The essence of the new approach is that all machine mechanisms are rotary. This gives a great advantage in terms of design and increasing the working life of the machine. As a result, the company has created a five-axis machining center with high load capacity by combining six identical CNC-controlled rotary mechanisms into one whole.

You can already see the work of the machine today on the demonstrator of multi-axis orbital technology manufactured at the plant, which allows visualizing all kinds of machining on a scale of 1:3.
After all the tests of the new technology, the production of three types of machines - Orbit-800, Orbit-1600, Orbit-3200 with different table capacity is planned to be launched from 2025. 
In the near future, various parts and components of the prototype of the Orbit-800 five-axis machining center will appear in production. In the future, the implementation of the project may significantly affect the range of products manufactured at the enterprise, as all the main working components of the machine tools are of high serialization. All six rotary devices of the new machine tool have the same size and contain similar components. Consequently, the percentage of production utilization with serial products should increase.

«We are aware of the fact that in the coming years and decades we will work to regain lost positions and, at least, to start a stable production of simple metalworking equipment. I am sure that this will be realized. Over the past years, we have not only worked out the design, but also provided patent protection for the invention», said General Director Dmitry Salov, one of the authors of the concept.