Pilot 640 Offers Time Savings

Heidenhain’s lathe control, the CNC Pilot 640, is now available with upgrades. A turn plus feature is now standard on purchases that enable the creation of a lathe program by the push of a button with as much as 90 percent time savings. This version of the control software also includes other improvements such as added Functional Safety (FS) features and expansions that provide the machine operator and the machine tool builder with more benefits.

The operator can perform five-axis simultaneous machining and combined turn-mill operation, full surface machining with B axis and counterspindle, and as many as three channels for asynchronous multi-side machining.

Multitouch operation enables swiping and zooming in and out, and high resolution 3D simulation graphics have been added. Machining operations with one or several setups (multi-channel operation) can be programmed separately, the company says. The maximum number of controlled axes and spindles has been increased to 24 using appropriate options.

The lathe control is available with two screen formats: 19" and 15.6" with as many as 25 configurable fields. It also now works with the company’s display handwheels HR 520 (FS) and the HR 550 FS radio handwheel system.

For those interested in connected machining, this product can be incorporated into such systems by using the company’s Remote Desktop Manager and StateMonitor for capturing machining data.