Vacuum on Horizontal

[Jkermit83]

I'm looking to tool up my Kitamura machine with vacuum chucks.  Does anyone know where to find large rotating union fittings?  Or how have you seen it done?

 

I've attached an image of one of our vertical machines' vacuum tables.

[crazy^millman]

Enerpac, Carr-Lane, Jergens, and few others come to mind that have Rotary Couplings. Need to think about a reservoir tank also. They seem to help keep a vacuum verse just the volume of the area holding the vacuum. The tanks acts like a buffer to help keep the amount of volume needed to pull vacuum balanced between the fixture and the part. Having only the volume of the fixture it can not be enough to balance the force you want to keep. Where possible have attachment pins to bolts or something since you have gravity working against you. Vacuum lets go nice not having a part sitting in the machine also where the reservoir with a check valve is nice. Might think about a pressure switch in the system hooked up the emergency stop. You loose pressure the machine alarms out.

[mkd]

Doesn't the APC shuttle the pallets back and fourth rather than the same direction?

The wires on our Mori 5th axis drop in from the top and just swing back and fourth.

 

only mentioning it because, unless you're doing a million B revolutions you might no need to worry about it too much.

[Jkermit83]

We do use big tanks to catch coolant and add volume to the system on our verticals.  And yes we are not doing much rotation but do need to get to all 4 faces.  I found a simple union on McMaster-carr that should work.  Just wondering how others do it.