HIGHLY EFFICIENT AUTOMATIC MACHINE TOOL CARRYING OUT A CYCLIC PROCESS OF OPERATIONS AND COMBINED TRANSLATIONAL MOTIONS

摘要

A method of, and apparatus for automatically machining work pieces, wherein a plurality of single spindle units are fixedly attached to a support, and the work pieces are maneuvered in front of the work units by a translatable table. The number of single spindle work units is determined by the formula 2N-1, wherein N is the number of machining operations to be performed on each work piece. As such, there is an odd number of work units thereby creating a central unit which carrys out the last machining operation to be performed in the work piece. The axes of the work units are precisely equally spaced from one another, and this spacing equals the spacing between the work pieces. The apparatus is cyclically operated so that a plurality of work pieces can be worked on simultaneously by individual work units and a new work piece can be loaded when the machining operation is completed on a previously loaded work piece.