Machines engineered specifically to perform skiving and roller burnishing operations deliver precise roundness tolerances and quality surface finishes.
For a hydraulic cylinder to operate effectively, the cylinder’s ID must be precisely round and have a mirror-like surface finish to ensure a tight seal between it and the mating internal piston. This is commonly achieved through skiving and subsequent roller burnishing inside a tubular workpiece. Skiving uses a set of carbide blades positioned around the diameter of a tool to slice away chips and create a geometrically round bore.
Roller burnishing, a cold-working process, uses multiple rollers to compress the peaks of material left behind after skiving to generate an extremely smooth surface finish. Burnishing also introduces a residual stress layer into the cylinder wall, which improves cylinder fatigue life.
These operations are sometimes performed in one pass using a combination Skiving & Roller Burnishing tool on a BTA-style deep-hole drilling machine which is far from optimal and stable. However, from the beginning Profimach has designed a series of machines engineered specifically to perform skiving and roller burnishing operations. Profimach’S SRB-series machines use a single tool for both operations, achieving roundness tolerances of IT-7 or IT-8 and bore surface finishes as smooth as Ra 0,3 to 0,2 micron in one setup and one tool pass.
 

1. Workholding

The tubes used for hydraulic cylinders are relatively thin. Care must be taken to secure the tube rigidly enough for the skiving and roller burnishing processes, but not so tightly as to deform it. Therefore, clamping cones are typically used to hold the tubes on both ends instead of three-jaw chucks. This clamping method also facilitates quick workpiece changeovers in automated environments. In addition, extra support must be provided along the length of the tube due to the inherently high length-to-diameter ratio of these workpieces. The SRB-series uses different V-shaped hydraulic clamps to provide this support.

2. Power train

Thin cuts are taken during skiving. A skiving blade’s radial engagement with the workpiece might be just 0,2 mm and feeds might be 1 mm per revolution, per blade.
However, each tool has two, three, four or six skiving blades, which multiples the effective feed rate. Similarly, the cold-working roller burnishing process requires a lot of torque and high spindle speed as it plasticizes and compresses the peaks that skiving leaves behind. As a result, the SRB-series features a more robust power train with higher horsepower motors and faster spindle speeds than conventional BTA drilling machines and a much lower point of gravity of working towards the bed, which results in much less stress in the machine body.

3. Rotary union

A hydraulic circuit inside the skiving and roller burnishing tool expands the skiving blades and burnishing rollers during cutting operations. Therefore, the SRB-series has a rotary union at one end of the tool headstock to provide a hydraulic/pneumatic connection throughout the length of the rotating tool. Once the cutting pass is completed, the blades and rollers are retracted into the tool as it is removed from the tube. The tool continues to rotate as it is removed, but nylon guides on the tool and continuous coolant delivery prevent damage to the cylinder wall.
The Profimach’s SRB-series machines are available in skiving/burnishing diameters ranging from 30 to 600 mm and lengths to 16 meter (larger machines are available upon request).