With this new FP 6000 in place and in-house, LIFT now has the ability to design, produce, and test full-scale parts and components over a large material spectrum, enabling its members to develop and deploy new and advanced materials manufacturing processes and cutting-edge technologies for the metal cutting industry.

DETROIT - LIFT—Lightweight Innovations For Tomorrow, a national manufacturing innovation institute, today announce the HELLER FP 6000 5-Axis Machining Center has been installed, and is ready for use, at its research and manufacturing facility in the Corktown neighborhood of Detroit. With the installation of this machine, HELLER is assisting LIFT and its members to further develop next generation processes in lightweight metal manufacturing.

"Our focus is all about innovations in lightweighting, which means providing our members with state-of-the-art equipment, like the new HELLER 5-Axis Machining Center, to help them achieve their goals," said Nigel Francis, CEO and executive director, LIFT. "With access to machining tools like the HELLER FP 6000, the world's largest linear friction welder and other cutting edge machining equipment, our world-class R&D center for metalworking is the global resource for innovation."

With this new FP 6000 in place and in-house, LIFT now has the ability to design, produce, and test full-scale parts and components over a large material spectrum, enabling its members to develop and deploy new and advanced materials manufacturing processes and cutting-edge technologies for the metal cutting industry.

About the HELLER FP6000
• State-of-the-art 5-Axis machining center with fifth axis in the tool
• Configured with a pallet changer enhancing production cycle times
• Simultaneous 5-side machining that utilizes a swivel head or tilting head kinematics
• Universal machining center - ideal for machining a large range of parts over a wide material spectrum
• Easy to automate system with workpiece or pallet automation for high-volume applications
• Optimizes parts costs by reducing the number of clamping positions and complete machining in one set-up
• Large part capability with a positioning range of (X/Y/Z): 1000/1000/1300mm and load capacity of 1400kg.

"Our partnership with LIFT allows us the opportunity to not only showcase and demonstrate our technology, but also help LIFT and its members achieve their lightweighting goals," said Steve Pegram, Vice President, HELLER Machine Tools.

"The HELLER FP 6000 machining center is the right choice for anyone wanting to perform numerous functions on one machine and produce reliably, not just today, but in the future as well. We're excited to see what LIFT and its members innovate from it," Pegram added.

To see a time lapse video of the machining center installation, click here.

ABOUT LIFT
LIFT, operated by the American Lightweight Materials Manufacturing Innovation Institute (ALMMII), is a Detroit-based, public-private partnership committed to the development and deployment of advanced lightweight metal manufacturing technologies, and implementing education and training initiatives to better prepare the workforce today and in the future. LIFT is one of the founding institutes of Manufacturing USA, and is funded in part by the Department of Defense with management through the Office of Naval Research. Visit www.lift.technology or follow on Twitter @NewsFromLIFT to learn more.

About HELLER - HELLER Solutions: Knowing how it's done.
HELLER designs, develops, manufactures and engineers machine tool production solutions globally. Our company has manufacturing plants in Germany, USA, Brazil, China and England. We are experts in special manufacturing solutions in the automotive, oil and gas, aerospace, defense and heavy machinery industry sectors. Our mission is to provide our customer base with profitable production systems that provide short term ROI with true system reliability. HELLER - Producing machine tools since 1894.

For more information on HELLER or its family of world-class machine tools and turnkey flexible manufacturing systems visit: https://www.heller-us.com