In this post, Tom Lesch, Regional Sales Manager at C.R. Onsrud (Troutman, North Carolina) and Ken Stissel (National Sales Manager) talk about the HM-Series (a.k.a. Hybrid Mill) machining center, and how this machine might be able to help you and your company be more profitable in your manufacturing through accurate, high-speed, high rpm machining of aluminum and composite materials.
This Post Covers:
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Brief history of C.R. Onsrud, where we came from and who we are today.
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Brief coverage of some of our other machine models.
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Deep drive into the Hybrid Mill with examples of its features and options that have helped our clients save money in their parts manufacturing.
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Twin spindle / twin table options (aka Dual Process) and how it might significantly improve your throughput.
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Case study from a customer who shares how the machine has helped his company be more profitable.
Brief History of C.R. Onsrud
The Onsrud family started building machines in 1915 in the Chicago area and through both World Wars. Onsrud offered machines that built aluminum wing spars and built M1 Garand rifles. We even had a special machine that made a lap joint for a boat called the Higgins Boat, which was a craft that landed many of the troops on the beaches during World War II.
Today, at C.R. Onsrud in Troutman, North Carolina, we have about 190 employees, 155,000 square feet total of manufacturing space in two different buildings, and we’re expanding into yet another 67,000 sq. ft. building to be completed by the end of 2024 as well as adding at least 25 full-time jobs.
Currently, in one building we do all of our cutting of the steel and fabrication. In the other building, the main assembly building, we do the stress relieving, machining, final assembly, paint, quality control testing, and ship the machines out the door. Over the years our specialty has become building tailor-made CNC and automation solutions for our clients to help meet their automation goals. We focus on using high-quality components and providing unparalleled support and service to our clients.
Models & Capabilities
Here are just a few of our other series:
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High Rail: 7′ up to 10′ of Z-stroke. Common customers include companies that manufacture rocket and space components, ground and air transportation components for commercial and military aircraft, home and SIPs components, and large foundry patternmakers.
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5-Axis Q-Series: A popular machine that is used primarily for trimming composites and plastic components and to perform light machining of aluminum, such as plastic chairs for buses. Some job shops have our machines to do a lot of carbon fiber composite work.
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Compact High Rail (CH): Primarily used for aerospace customers, transportation, and space. We even have a client that uses this model to machine components for hypersonic missiles as well as an attack helicopter manufacturer who uses this machine for cutting components for their aircraft.
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G-Series: Designed for flat or panel work, the G-Series comes in a variety of sizes including one we built with a 10′ x 69′ long work table and two gantries that can work on the material at the same time. We have a customer who cuts 6″ thick friction stir welded aluminum plates for naval ships. We’ve built machines even larger!
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E-Series: Offered in 3- and 5-Axis. We can add up to 6 spindles and multiple tables. These machines are commonly used by foundry patternmakers. We have a client that has a number of these machines with robotic cells putting aluminum plates onto cut battery trays for electric vehicles.
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X-Series / EX-Series: The X and Extreme X are popular machines for cutting aluminum extrusions for electric vehicles, trailer manufacturers, and boat lift manufacturers, etc.
Hybrid Mill (HM)
Typical clients of this machine are the department of defense, marine, pattern shops, job shops as well as commercial and military aerospace manufacturers that make satellite and space components. The American-made HM-Series machine was designed for one thing …
… to cut aluminum and composites fast.
The features that sets this Fixed Bridge Moving Table machine apart from the rest when it comes to large-format aluminum and composites cutting:
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Twin 5′ x 8′ tables or single 12′ x 6′
Use the twin tables independently to machine completely different parts on each table. Or use one table for Op 1 and the other table for Op 2, preventing the need for you to change out any fixtures. You can always lock the tables together and use this machine as a large 6′ x 12′.
A unique benefit of the twin table design is that when you’re using the tables independently, you can put two 5′ sized parts on each table and machine completely around them by having one table in the forward position while the other table is in the back.
The spindle goes past the table ≅40″, so you can machine all five sides of the part on the table.
- 40″ Z-Stroke accommodates your large parts and fixtures.
- Roller rail on all axes provides high-speed performance and rigidity.
- Linear scales can be installed on all axes for high tolerance and precision applications.
- Volumetric Compensation can be set up for high tolerance and precision applications.
This is done for all five axes typically onsite after the machine’s been assembled. We send out a 3rd party A2LA-accredited company that performs a full volumetric compensation on your machines.
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Two-axis head gives you full 5-axis capability for high-speed machining.
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Each axis in the head has an encoder for positional accuracy.
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The rotary axis has +260°/-260° giving you 520° of full rotation.
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The tilt axis has 100° of tilt in either direction.
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Dual-Process Technology
Adding a second head to the twin table HM-Series gives you the ability to run a program on the left table with the left spindle while an independent program runs on the right table with the right spindle. With both spindles having full 5-axis capability, you can start and stop each program independently. They have their own independent tool changers that can operate at independent times, so it really is like having two 6′ x 6′ machines but in the footprint of one. The other great thing about dual process is that it allows you to lock both of the tables together and still use both spindles. Or park one spindle way off to the side giving the other spindle full access to the entire 6′ x 12′ table area.
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Spindle Speeds of 15hp (standard) and 24 hp at high-speed cutting at 24,0000 rpm, 33 hp with high-speed cutting at 20,000, all the way up to 75hp spindle for maximum material removal rates and high-speed cutting at 18,000 rpm.
There are quite a few spindle options available. We, at Onsrud, will discuss with you what you want to cut with the machine, what materials, and what kind of productivity you want to see. Then we tailor the right spindle for your specific needs.
For composites, carbon fiber, etc, those clients typically have a 15hp or 24hp spindle. We do have a lot of clients that do heavy-duty cutting of aluminum and even some steel cutting. In those cases you are typically going to want the 33 hp, the 50 hp, or even the 75 hp spindle. Rigid tapping is also available on many of the spindles as well.
Traditionally with a milling machine of this size you’re going to have a little bit lower rpm capacity. However, with most of the spindles available on the HM-Series, this machine is capable of up to 24,000 rpm. This leads to very high material removal rates. We’ve seen up to 150 cubic inches per minute of aluminum material removal. Our clients also tell us that the higher rpm offers a better edge finish. They’re seeing a cleaner, better edge finish off of the HM-Series with the 24,000 rpm capable spindle and that the high-speed milling also allows for faster feed rates. The HM-Series can be capable of up to 3,000 ipm of feed rate.
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Chip Conveyors: 7 augers in the base (option) all feed into a high-capacity front chip conveyor to keep up with the amount of chips the HM-Series produces. These move all the chips forward. You can also get an optional chip conveyor to move the chips out of either side of the machine.
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Dust Collection:
If you are trimming composites, carbon fiber, and other materials that make a lot of dust, the HM-Series has an enclosure option. We have even provided for customers a dust collection system integrated in with the enclosure to pull with negative pressure within the enclosure, thus keeping the dust from coming out.
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Coolant options:
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Flood coolant: 350-gallon system.
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MQL (minimum quantity lubricant), which gives you near dry machining with less cleanup.
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A high-pressure, Through the Tool system. On some spindles, we use a 400 psi high-pressure system that can be combined with a perimeter washdown system to keep those chips flowing.
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Talk to us about the options available when it comes to tool lubrication and coolant, and we’ll set one up that’s best for your application.
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FANUC® latest generation of controls. FANUC is by far the most widely used CNC in the world, so it’s easy to find skilled operators and technicians to service the equipment.
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Plenty of speed for high-speed cutting.
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Plenty of memory for your large programs.
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Peace of mind when it comes to reliability and longevity. FANUC has a 52-year mean time between failure on all their CNC products, and they offer lifetime support for every component within the CNC, which means you will never have an obsolete controller with a FANUC system.
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Comes standard with the FANUC interface as well as C.R. Onsrud’s own user-friendly touch screen HMI, making it very simple to learn and operate.
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If your operator is used to FANUC CNCs and they want to use the classic FANUC operator screens, that’s okay! But with a couple of clicks of a button, you have the Onsrud interface. We’ve had a lot of customers tell us how great that interface is, how easy it is to operate and train operators, and how more productive it makes their operators.
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Tool setter and probing options for maximizing the accuracy, efficiency, and quality of your machine tools with the software built into the CNC controls for ease of use.
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Measure length with traditional plunger style tool setters.
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Measure length and diameter touch-trigger options (such as with the Renishaw TS27R) or radio transmission options (such as the Renishaw RMP600).
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Measure length and diameter non-contact options (such as with the Renishaw NC4 laser tool setting system).
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Install a variety of probes for parts and fixture locating.
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Perform part inspection right on your machine!
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Onsrud’s Oysnc Machine Analytics® and monitoring software:
This software resides in the controller interface. It constantly monitors the machine’s health and productivity and reports all that information back to you. On the productivity side, the software can monitor things like spindle up and down time, and part count keeps track of how long your machine’s been in each mode.
We have a lot of clients with multiple C.R. Onsrud machines. They have Osync running on each one, and they can compare and contrast productivity, to see if there’s maybe an issue with a machine or a setup or if an operator needs more training.
On the machine health side, Osync is constantly monitoring the servo loads, the system voltages and amperages. It keeps you up to date on any preventative maintenance information. You even have the ability to go into Osync and set email or text alerts based on your work schedule.
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Manufactured in America. Designed, fabricated, machined, painted, assembled, and shipped from our factory in Troutman, NC.
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Numerous other options and capabilities are available. Plus, it’s affordable compared to other brands with similar capacity.
Case Study
Adam Grizzle, CEO and owner of Aerospace Fabrications of Georgia (Dallas, Georgia).
We’re a company that consists of about 55 employees. We handle everything from 3- to 5-axis machining sheet metal manufacturing and fabrication and certainly have a fairly capable aluminum heat treatment facility.
We absolutely fell in love with the Hybrid Mill as soon as we saw it. One of the more immediate production process improvements that we noticed — as soon as we started moving existing product lines over to the Onsrud Hybrid was the ability to take advantage of the range of its articulated head. The angularity that we were able to reach greatly improved our ability to machine a complete product in a single phase or in a single setup rather than having multiple production setups.
An example is placing pilot holes in standing legs for a lot of our customers. In the past, this had always been a manual process — much more time consuming and much less accurate. And so with this new capability, we now have basically converted many of our parts that we still would be machining on other equipment today, over to Onsrud simply to save time and improve accuracy for our customers.
This being our very first Onsrud purchase, and certainly our very first purchase of an articulating head machine, we’ve actually been able to reduce many of our product’s machining times by as much as 40% using this machine over equipment that, quite frankly, I thought that we were already getting a very efficient manufacturing rate.
If you have some low to medium manufacturing rate, you’re machining materials such as aluminum, perhaps some other softer alloys, with regard to the aerospace industry [the HM-Series] is certainly something that fits quite well, [especially if] you’re able to combine that same articulating head range with such a large work envelope. I can’t imagine a better fit.
We were graciously invited to visit the facility in Troutman, where our first machine actually was sitting in the inventory. More importantly, we were invited to actually tour the manufacturing process of not only this machine but similar models to give us some confidence that we felt that we needed to ensure [us] that it was built with the quality that we expected. It was a perfect trip. Now, we not only made some good first relationships, I like to hope we actually made some friends that day, and that would ensure a much longer future relationship between our two companies as well.
When the Hybrid actually first turned on [with] the LEDs, I have to admit it drew quite a crowd from the existing machinists that we have. Not to mention, it was the largest machine that we have ever had in here. I can assure you that the Onsrud actually held her own during our first couple of days of demonstrations to our existing future operators for the machine. It wasn’t just a couple of days into it, we had some folks jockeying for the position of being the first full-time operator for this piece of equipment. And well, at this point, it looks like the only way that some others are going to get a spot is for us to go ahead and try to purchase another one.
If you have any questions about the HM-Series or our other CNC machinery offerings, please call us at: 704-508-7000 or reach out via email: info@cronsrud.com.
* Specifications/Options may vary on certain machine sizes, controls, and spindles. Specifications are approximate and subject to change.
