Design of a precision, agile line boring station

This paper describes a new agile line boring station for machining of long bores in automotive applications, e.g. crank and camshaft bores in engine blocks. The machine includes a "smart" line boring tool with an on-line compensation mechanism, relying on sensing and intelligence built into the tool itself, for real-time correction of the boring process. To supplement the advantages provided by the "smart" tool, a prototype agile line boring machine was developed as a joint effort between the University of Michigan and Lamb Technicon, a machine tool builder. The design integrates multiple new concepts of mechanical structure of the machine with an intelligent controller.