[SwampDonkey]

Im not finding much public info on this, but I know a firm that manufactures mud motors (hydraulic powered motors placed above the drill bit used when drilling for oil and gas) who ordered a large lathe with live tooling. What really surprised me was that it has no ball screws. All motion is driven by precision hydraulic rams capable of, at the very least, the performance of precision ballsrews. I figured some of you guys 'in the know" could shed some light on this since its the first ive heard of it anywhere. There's a good chance its a custom machine since money is of no concern to this particular engineering and manufacturing firm.

Thoughts?

[underthetire]

Was common place in the late 60s through 70s to have hydraulic powered slides, they were somewhat accurate, but finicky. I'm guessing this thing was built for heavy drilling, not a ton of accuracy.

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[SwampDonkey]

Was common place in the late 60s through 70s to have hydraulic powered slides, they were somewhat accurate, but finicky. I'm guessing this thing was built for heavy drilling, not a ton of accuracy.

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No, its for machining the actual motors. "Mud motors" may sound like low tech devices but they are state of the art precision hydraulic motors built with aerospace precision. These are also the devices that allow modern directional drilling and are steerable, GPS guided, computer controlled, high tech works of engineering. The hydraulic live-tooling lathe/ machining center being installed to manufacture these motors is in itself without ballscrews. Its totally motivated by linear hydraulic servos.

[RCaffin]

I have seen spinning lathes with hydraulic drives, but of course the forces involved there would kill any ACME threads pretty quick and would not do ball screws much good either. Good optical gratings for feedback - could work.

Cheers
Roger

[SwampDonkey]

I have seen spinning lathes with hydraulic drives, but of course the forces involved there would kill any ACME threads pretty quick and would not do ball screws much good either. Good optical gratings for feedback - could work.

Cheers
Roger

Apparently it works. The machine is likely installed by now.

[underthetire]

I guess it all depends on each person's definition of accuracy. Most of our accurate machines are linear motor on hydrostatic ways with laser or laser scale feedback. We routinely cut 10's of a micron. Our ballscrew machines are good for one micron.

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[RCaffin]

All depends on the quality of the servo driver and the hydraulic valve. Those MOOG valves may be $$$, but they work.
With a laser for position sensing - yeah!

Cheers
Roger