An 8mm capacity, single spindle, CNC automatic lathe now has a motorised unit to power live tooling and there is also an option of a workpiece conveyor with the machine.

The world's first 8mm capacity single-spindle, automatic lathe with tailstock - the Deco Sigma 8 (Previously Deco 8sp) from Tornos has undergone product enhancements. Since its launch in 2005, the highly successful Deco Sigma 8 with five basic linear axes now incorporates a motorised unit for live rotary tools and a workpiece conveyor belt to deliver additional productivity options for customers. The new motorised unit enables the user to install a front-mounted and a rear-mounted live rotary tool for simultaneous main and counterspindle operations respectively.

This allows customers to conduct drilling, face milling on or off axis, tangential milling on the diameter with polygon cutting, thread whirling and thread milling currently being researched.

This development brings significantly improved capability to the Deco Sigma 8 allowing customers to achieve relatively complex component manufacture without the cost of a high specification machine.

This development enables the workpiece to be machined on its front and rear faces within compact dimensions whilst retaining every tool position.

It also allows rotational speeds to be set digitally as it is powered by the same S11 motor used to drive transverse spindles.

This new development has a maximum rotational speed of 10,000 rev/min and is suited to ER8 collets with a maximum 5mm tool shank diameter.

The unit can be mounted right at the back of the tool system X1/Y1 and can replace the 'L-shaped' tool support for 2 x 4 fixed turning tools (front and back).

Whenever this equipment is being employed, an 'L-shaped' bracket can be mounted to hold 6 fixed-position axial tools, three at the front and three at the back.

* conveyor system - the Deco Sigma 8 developed from extensive market research enables Tornos to address markets such as the electronics and medical.

The second development, the workpiece conveyor belt lends itself to these specific sectors and enables customers to enhance productivity and simplifies post operation handling of components.

This option enables workpieces to be conveyed from the workpiece separating unit, which is located outside the machine.

The machined workpieces are collected in a perforated tray and when another sorting system is used such as a turntable or a bucket distributor, a workpiece slide can be mounted in place of the tray.

The conveyor belt enables the end user to remove workpieces safely with a conveyor belt speed that can be adjusted to suit the work cycle.

The belt feed rate is fully adjustable and can operate from 1.2 to 21m/min.

This unit can be adapted to work with the customer's choice of external workpiece retrieval and sorting system, making it a truly universal system.