In recent years, Midaco has expanded its line of automatic pallet changers to accommodate the need for high-volume large precision parts machined to tight tolerances for the aerospace, energy, automotive, medical, defence, power generation, and oil and gas industries. These jobs cause significant spindle downtime due to the long and involved process of heavy/large part changeover. When combined with crane loading, first-article inspection and job interruption tasks, the machining centre can be idle up to 70% of the time. Idle machine time means slow production and lost profit for each machine owned.

Midaco says its pallet changers are a simple solution to eliminate unnecessary spindle downtime and rescue lost profit on large as well as small and mid-size machining centres.

The company manufactures pallet changers which adapt to virtually any brand and model of machining centre, including large bridge mills with travels up to 4826 x 2235 mm, and with a weight capacity of up to 14,528 kg.

Automatic pallet systems are easily installed on the right side or the left side of a VMC, or both sides for machines which do not move in the Y axis. Once a pallet or load of parts is complete, the next pallet or job is transferred into the machine automatically from the side-mounted shuttle on to the receiver fitted to the VMC table. As all part loading and job set-up tasks are performed offline (without the operator having to lean into or climb on to the machine) both productivity and ergonomics are maximised.
For further information www.midaco-corp.com