Compact cable guidance for the milling head of a machine tool

• What was needed: B15i and B17 series e-chains®
• Requirements: Guidance of a large number of cables in the tightest of spaces and at high traversing accelerations
• Industry: Machine tool manufacturing, CNC milling centers
• Success for the customer: two interlocking e-chains modified to enable a reverse bend radius utilize the available installation space perfectly and guide all cables safely.

Chiron-Werke GmbH is a manufacturer of CNC-controlled machining centers. In one of these machine centers, the swivel head rotates by over 90° around the workpiece in production. This enables faster machining of the workpiece and a reduction in costs since a single machining center is handling multiple functions.

The challenge in this application was routing a large number of cables to the milling head within an extremely confined installation space while accommodating high dynamic loads, including rotational speeds of approximately 540° per second and around 90 movements per minute. The solution had to maximize the available installation space without compromising the service life of the cable management system or the cables.

Additionally both cable carriers needed to incorporate multiple links capable of reverse bending.

The machine manufacturer opted for an e-igus e-chain solution. Based on all the mechanical parameters, the best technical cable routing option for the requirement profile consisted of B15i and B17 series E2 mini e-chains, nested inside one-another. The B15i running on the inside is accompanied by the slightly larger B17 e-chain on the outside. Due to the tight installation space and the required pivoting movement, individual chain links were reworked and provided with a reverse bend radius.

The connection at the moving end, a special solution also had to be designed to fix both e-chains to the moving end simultaneously. A special connector was used in the application today for this purpose. The compact e-chains were able to accommodate the particularly tight installation space in the application. At the same time, they safely guide all cables in the system, even at high and fast travelling speeds.