And end to the lengthy, old fashioned process involving scale drawings, the use of centre punches and hand drills.

The Steinhauer DrillMate 2212 CNC originally was designed as a good value piece of equipment for the switch cabinet workshop. The main characteristic of this machine is the manufacture of singe-pieces, variations and low multiples of switch cabinets. The time spent on the mechanical layout of the switch cabinet, the placing of components on the mounting-plate or outer parts of the switch cabinet, like doors or side panels compares favourably with the rest of the work necessary.

For conventional manufacture all components of the switch cabinet will be taken from the store-room and moved around on the undrilled mounting plate until a correct layout is found. After that the layout will be transferred to the mounting plate by taking exact measurements. Then the holes will be center-punched and drilled with a hand-drill. For a complex switch cabinet the time needed will be between 3 to 5 hours.

The software of the DrillMate 2212 CNC revolutionizes this process by a complete planning of the switch cabinet on the PC. None of the components of the switch cabinet need to be available ex stock for the planning process. The design process will be executed with virtual components only.

For the planning of a backplane one will pick a suitable mounting plate from the extensive library and place it by drag & drop onto the drawing window of the CAD software. After that all other parts, like cable- channels, top hat rails and backplane mounted components will be placed by drag & drop from the library on this virtual mounting plate. Fine positioning will be assisted by extensive tools of a professional CAD software. The complete design-phase of a complex switch cabinet will be reduced to about 15 minutes with the software.

Even parts which will not be fixed directly on the mounting plate but clipped on the top hat rails can be processed in the drawing to get a general documentation of the finished switch cabinet. These MOE (marking of equipment) parts can be picked directly from the library or imported from your electro-planning software (like EPLAN, Eltime etc.)

Illustration: Finished mounting plate with MOE-parts and matching doors.

The finished drawing can easily be exported to the postprocessor which will initiate the manufacturing process after carrying out a series of reasonableness checks. After finishing the drawing it will be exported to the postprocessor which will perform the automated machine-programming after various plausibility checks. Components which are not mounted directly onto the mounting plate will be removed from the drilling program by the software automatically. The further machining of the workpiece will be done by the drilling machine automatically.

Whilst the machine is running the operative can perform other duties like trimming cable channels and top hat rails. The cutting-list will be generated by the software too. Production will be performed to a tolerance of 0.1 mm and with low noise levels.

The software allowes the planning of a complete switch cabinet in one drawing (i.e. mounting plate with all outer cabinet parts like doors, roofs, side panels) as well as multispan assemblies of more than one switch cabinet in a row. The postprocessor will automatically generate single drilling-programs from the complete drawing.

F.A.Q. - Frequently asked questions

Q The machine only drills holes of one diameter. What if we need bigger holes, threads or cut-outs?

A It is a simple process to enlarge a hole or cut a thread into an existing hole. Many workshops have a mechanical press for making holes. The automatic drilling machine will drill pilot holes or the software will control the press with an optional system.

Alternatively one can think about the way of fixing parts to save time. For instance you could use self-drilling, self-tapping screws or POP rivets instead of cut thread screws.

Companies from the heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) branch which usually only need mounting plates with cable channels and top hat rails can use the automatic drilling machine for a fully automated production.

Naturally the software allowes manual changing of drills too to get drillholes of various diameters automatically.

Included in the scope of supply:

Open Windows CAD-Software for designing structural-drawings with extensive component library, Steinhauer postprocessor for reasonableness checks and automated generation of machine code, software interface for various E-CAD applications and a tool kit of standard drills.

You can download our data-sheet in Adobe Acrobat format here (german language)
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Silent machine operation for ergonomic working