From the rough part to the finished camshaft

In almost every four stroke engine for cars and light trucks, camshafts are used for the control of the valves. The design of these components are modified quite frequently since they have an important role to reduce emissions and fuel consumption of gas and diesel engines. Assembled camshafts with fixed or variable cams (Valve-Tronic) are gaining more importance against conventional cast or forged camshafts. Key factors for this change is the reduction of weight and higher tensile strength, higher required flexibility in manufacturing, based on the part variety and cam lobe contours.

Felsomat has taken on the challenge and can provide a variety of high technology manufacturing and assemly solutions including all automation possibilities:

• Machining of the individual lobes in the soft as well as in the hard state including the milling of the lobe contour
• Laser structuring of the ID surface of the lobe for an additonal form fit connection after the thermo joining process
• Assembly of lobes on to a tube with hydraulic high pressure systems, IHU. For this process the tube is deformed under the lobe into the plastic state through hydraulic high pressure up to 2500bar, whereas the joining lobe is only deformed in the elastic state, providing the pre-load for a tight fit
• Assembly of single lobes, end pieces and pump lobes on tubes

Special attention to the joining process has to be given to the fit diameters. A post process gage is often used to compensate for the wear of the cutting edge and ensure a constant high quality. Extreme high requirements for roundness and cylindricity of the bore with a small wall thickness is demanding a high end turning machine and sophisticated work holding.

Shortest cycle times below 5 seconds for single lobes are an additional challenge for the machine and the material flow.

With the pendulum technology of the Felsomat FTC turning centre and an effective loading time of 1 second, idle times can be cut to a minimum in relation to the short machining time.

The Felsomat modular automation building blocks are offering all required additional functions such as hopper feeders, gantry and robot grippers, as well as stacking systems for a damage free work piece transport of the finished machined lobes in a production system. Because of the high variety and the only very small differences of the parts, a DMC code is required to obtain correct identification.

As a systems provider, Felsomat offers you everything from one source, from the forged raw part to the completely assembled and finish ground camshaft.