Southern Gear has equipped two Doosan CNC horizontal turning centers with advanced RoboJob Turn-Assist robots, thus reducing workpiece load/unload times by 50 percent and allowing skilled machine operators to perform a multitude of other tasks.
The RoboJob automation is extremely compact, easy to integrate, and delivers the highest level of reliability and repeatability for the automatic load/unload of gear blanks ranging in diameters from 1 inch to 5 1/2 inches, making it ideal for the diverse needs of Southern Gear’s gear blank turning operations. These machines, together with 12 CNC lathes and two larger vertical turning centers, equip Southern Gear’s CNC turning department for gear blanks as large as 40 inches in diameter.
“The new RoboJob automation not only adds much needed capacity, but also frees up our skilled machine operators for other tasks,” said Southern Gear president Karen Malin. “These robots are exceptionally reliable as well, which is critically important to our fast-growing aerospace and defense business, where there’s no room for error.”
The addition of the new automation is part of a multi-million-dollar, company-wide investment in new technologies, methodologies, and processes that, over the last several years, has, according to Malin, added much-needed capacity to Southern Gear’s vertically-integrated shop floor.
As a veteran-owned company in business for more than 65 years, Southern Gear is an industry leader in the precision manufacturing of all types of cylindrical and bevel gears used in vehicles and devices operating on land, sea, air and in space. Southern Gear is vertically integrated, with all critical gear-making operations performed in-house. Customers benefit from parts produced under one roof, and under the company’s stringent AS9100 D, ISO 9001:2015 certified quality systems.
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