| 摘要 |
1,235,515. Rail system. SUNDSTRAND CORP. 11 June, 1968 [30 June, 1967], No. 27809/68. Heading B7L. [Also in Division B3] A tool changing mechanism for a machine tool having spindles 25, 26 comprises a tool storage magazine in the form of a rail supporting means 46 which describes an oval path and on which are individually and movably mounted tool magazine elements in the form of shuttle cars 50. Each car 50 carries a tool T in an adapter and is moved on the rail 46 by an endless chain and driving dogs. A selected shuttle car is brought to a tool transfer station along the oval path and a transfer arm 36 is adapted to move a section 45 of the rail 46, which carries at least one shuttle car, from the tool transfer station to a position wherein a tool is coaxial with a spindle for a tool exchange. The arm 36 is movable along a track 33 by a motor driven pinion and rack engagement. While the movable rail section 45 is adjacent the spindle 25 or 26 an auxiliary rail section 160 may be raised into the oval path to allow the cars 50 to be moved around the rail 46. The mechanism includes reciprocable means (Fig. 6, not shown) at each side of the gap in the rail 46 accommodating the movable section 45, for moving cars 50 on to and off from the movable section 45, and the movable section 45 itself carries reciprocable means for moving a pair of cars 50 from a first and second position respectively to a second and third position respectively. In operation the movable section 45 carries an empty car 50 and a car 50 carrying a tool T to a spindle 25 or 26. The empty car in the second (middle) position grips the tool already in the spindle, the spindle is raised, the two cars are moved sideways to present the car with the tool T in alignment with the spindle, the spindle is lowered on to the new tool, and the movable section 45 retracted. The cars 50 may be of different sizes and comprise resilient gripping means for a tool and a drive pin which is engageable by drive dogs on the endless chain and which is accurately positioned relative to the centre line of the tool T. The cars engage the rail 46 by means of rollers. The endless chain has less number of drive dogs than there are cars so that some cars are pushed along by adjacent cars. To enable gaps between cars to be closed the drive dogs are resiliently attached to the chain so that they can snap past the drive pins on the cars. The drive to the endless chain is automatically stopped when a car reaches the inlet end of the movable rail section 45. The tool change mechanism may be used by manually arranging the cars in the desired sequence, or each car may carry coding rings (70) (Fig. 8, not shown) to be automatically read by a code reader. |
