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The TubeMill
The TubeMill is a gantry-type milling machine specially designed to machine tubular workpieces with a length of up to 3 meters. The machining of the particular workpiece doesn't require a high throughput, hence the basic design focuses mainly on low costs rather than high machining speeds. However, because the layout is very modular, low speed components may easily be replaced by high speed machining elements, turning this simple machine in a high-speed machining center.
The gantry is fabricated from rectangular tubes to create a lightweight, yet stiff bridge. The bridge was optimized using finite elements methods by identifying the optimum size and location of each individual tube. Fast computation times were acieved by modelling the bridge with thin walled elements called shells. The base was also modeled with shells and used to optimize the size and position of the steel plates. more details
