The NV5000 vertical machining center hit the market in March 2002
as Mori Seiki's new standard for a new generation.
Sales have been phenomenal in spite of the current
worldwide severe economic environment. This unexpected
success is a symbol of Mori Seiki's overall ability
to make the machine design reflect customer demands
not only in basic performance but also convenience,
maintenance, service, price, and more.
Now we have the honor of presenting the NH5000, the newest
horizontal machining center as the second in our line
of next-generation machines. The new product introduction,
held at the Iga Plant show room, was a 4-day discussion
with our customers on how to improve profits, drawing
attention to the NH5000's high productivity.
Horizontal machining centers that can reduce labor are
becoming the norm in parts machining, a field which is
feeling the pressure to shift rapidly away from traditional
production types towards variable-lot variable-scale
production. Striving to create the final answer in horizontal
machining centers that are able to live up to this demand,
Mori Seiki has pursued extreme reliability to ensure
its products are the mainstay of any production floor.
When developing the NH5000, Mori Seiki took a new look
at the fundamental aspects of machining centers as
sources of productivity for customer profits, and saw
that a machine's operating rate is vitally important.
As a result, Mori Seiki incorporated the world's first
triple trough construction that can deliver up to 1.5
times the chip disposal power of conventional machines.
Careful and deliberate thought was also given to the
number of parts and their location in order to reduce
Mean Time To Repair (MTTR), in case of a malfunction.
The result is the Mori Seiki machine with the easiest
maintenance of all, delivering a 50 % reduction in
the average time spent on repairs and maintenance.
These efforts have endowed the machine with the
reliability to perform continuous unmanned operation
for long periods of time as part of a system. The
result is a full operating time twice as long as
conventional machines. And to maintain machining
precision, a quadrant protrusion correction function
has been included to ward off the effects of thermal
displacement. The development stage was characterized
by a continuation of the new concept of a next generation
machine, incorporating many comments by auto makers
as well as digital design analysis, reduction of
non-cutting time, and environmental and IT solutions
produced during the development of the NV5000. The
presentation venue had four NH5000 demonstration
models illustrating the machine's features such as
spindle speed, feedrate, heavy cutting, and chip
disposal, as well as seminars and DVD presentations
in related departments.
The most striking feature of this new product presentation
was the concentration on the M-S-A (Machines, Software,
Applications) triangle - important elements in improving
profits. For software, the VEGA™ Milling Edition
CAM software for the new machining center, designed
to bring out the best performance of the NH5000,
was revealed for the first time. Not only does it
radically reduce programming time, but lead-time
as well - a feature that caught the interest of many
visitors. In the area of applications, fixtures made
by the Mori Seiki Fixture Laboratory, Ltd. were displayed
to show our customers our total engineering power.
The User Support Package plans, which provide support
to customers introducing new machines, drew a great
deal of attention in the area of sales. This innovative
approach became the object of media stories for the
NV5000, and the same type of plans was unveiled at
the latest presentation ceremony. Altogether eight
plan are available, including the "Angle plate" and "Fixture" plans
designed for horizontal machining centers, providing
customers with plenty of options to make the right
choice.
The NH5000 horizontal machining center - the next step
in the evolution of Mori Seiki's new production concept,
from development all the way to sales. The true value
of this new concept has yet to undergo the test of
time, but the NH5000 could be undoubtedly described
as holding the vital key for the future of Mori Seiki's
future machine tool business.
We were able to unveil both the NV5000 and the NH5000
this year ahead of the JIMTOF show where many new
products are released, and we believe expectations
are high. Keep your eye out for new Mori Seiki machines
in the future.
