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New 5axis machine questions


MrFish
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Hi Team

We are looking at investing in a new 5 axis vertical mill, predominately work in the Medical and aerospace sector so needs to be accurate. Especially in operation over a shift. We unfortunately aren't in an air conditioned shop so can see temperature fluctuations of 15-20 degs C over a day. I can handle some slight Z "growth" as that is easy to chase but movement of the rotation centres must be minimal for the work we do.

We are realistically limited to the following brands due to local support. Okuma, DMG, Mori, Mazak, Matsuura, Kitamura

These are my current thinking on each option so far

Okuma - Genos 460-5ax - Will be well supported, known to be rigid (although we tend to program in a high speed style), doesn't have feed back scales or any sort of active cooling on the axis components so i am concerned it may move around a bit during the day. Limited tool carousel numbers. Can't spec high pressure TSC.

Mori - NMV3000 - This looks great with the driven around centre concept and I therefore imagine it would be very stable, but the price is very high in comparison.

DMG - There is a number of options from 3rd Gen DMU50, DMU65 MonoBlock, DMU 40 EVO, I think to be realistic in our accuracy needs we would probably have to be looking at the EVO series with all the axis cooling and these are again priced high. We do have experience with DMG and I am certainly a fan of Heidenhain controls on 5 axis machines.

Mazak - have no experience and don't know how they stand up ?, Not so sure about the "video game" style control !

Kitamura - MyTrunnion 4G - State some very impressive accuracy numbers , not sure if this is just marketing ?, no experience with code or control ?

Hermle ???, no local support so probably not a good idea but I do like a lot of the design aspects, gantry, mineral casting, Heidenhain control, crush spacers to protect spindle. 

Matsuura - Would probably be in at the MX330/520 level machines and the facility we work out of has a few, the operators aren't super impressed with them as far as thermal growth goes. Also not a fan of the way they have the trunnion "hanging" off the front of the casting, if we were at MAM level would be less concerned.

Would love to hear any opinions on any of these options, good or bad. Is very hard to get straight information out of a sales rep !!

Thanks

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We have a Mazak VC-500 and an I-600, both 5x vertical machining centers. Other then table size the only major difference is the VC-500 is a B,C axis machine vs A,C on the 600. Both have the smooth G control. They are accurate for what we need. Both machines have part probes so if you're concerned with growth you could probably measure every so many parts (shouldn't meas. the part with the same axis used to machine the feature) and have the machine adjust size's and such as needed, but ours seem pretty stable.

We looked at Mori's and DMG's but liked the trunion setups better.

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19 hours ago, MrFish said:

. We unfortunately aren't in an air conditioned shop so can see temperature fluctuations of 15-20 degs C over a day.

Medical parts and that don't really compute.

JM2C but that's gonna be tough unless you're just doing plastic trays.

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5 hours ago, JParis said:

Medical parts and that don't really compute.

JM2C but that's gonna be tough unless you're just doing plastic trays.

Yeah I totally hear you and came out of a shop that we air conditioned and saw a marked improvement in stability of the machines. We could even get away with a HAAS UMC750 for these medical parts with the right techniques.

Currently not an option to temperature control the current facility as we are just sub leasing a corner of a very large workshop. I guess we will have to allow for some inaccuracy's  and deal with them with smart techniques and probing. 

Really just looking for real world opinions on different brands/machines from people that actually use them instead of sales people.

Thanks

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The fine print on the kitamura says basically you need to have it in a lab.

We have all matsuuras and anything with a true position of less than .002 we usually make a probing sub program and not use the tilted work plane. It has no problem holding with the probes.

 

i would get the 520 over the 330.

 

 

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On 10/16/2022 at 2:17 PM, MrFish said:

Hi Team

We unfortunately aren't in an air conditioned shop so can see temperature fluctuations of 15-20 degs C over a day.....

Extremely tough order for any machine.

Probing will be your friend here. on DMU You can  get away with creating custom kinematics tables depending on the temperature in Siemens and especially on Heidenhain controls or simply automatically check kinematics every part you run.

We (DMGMORI) have added coolant chiller/heater for customers with similar issues where environmental was just too extreme...and yours really is extreme. This alleviates a lot... possibly the best solution for you outside of getting environment under control.

Kinematics take care of the machine, but not the part....so controlling temp inside the machine (the whole machine really) is your best bet.... otherwise chasing dimensional changes of weirdly shaped parts depending on temp is impossible...yup...coolant chiller/heater and just keep it circulating non-stop

 

Sorry...a little winded response ;)

Hth 

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27 minutes ago, ?Mark said:

Extremely tough order for any machine.

Probing will be your friend here. on DMU You can  get away with creating custom kinematics tables depending on the temperature in Siemens and especially on Heidenhain controls or simply automatically check kinematics every part you run.

We (DMGMORI) have added coolant chiller/heater for customers with similar issues where environmental was just too extreme...and yours really is extreme. This alleviates a lot... possibly the best solution for you outside of getting environment under control.

Kinematics take care of the machine, but not the part....so controlling temp inside the machine (the whole machine really) is your best bet.... otherwise chasing dimensional changes of weirdly shaped parts depending on temp is impossible...yup...coolant chiller/heater and just keep it circulating non-stop

 

Sorry...a little winded response ;)

Hth 

Hi Mark

Thanks, this is pretty much the approach i used at my last shop with a DMU 60, chilled coolant and probing with "in cycle" kinematic probing to correct rotation centres if needed. We could get the machine to hold 5 micron rotation centres after about 2hrs machining, but this was in a air conditioned environment. 

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32 minutes ago, Mick said:

Look at the MU series of Okumas if you want the other options. If you can,

The Genos are on the next rung down. You're right about local support for Okuma here. Unlike Mastercam *cough* :)

Thanks Mike, yip local support is definitely a big consideration.

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Support, support, support. Even large nationwide/worldwide companies have dealers that are weak and others that are strong.

I have a customer with operations in multiple states(same dealer, different territories) , for one of their machines (EDM) the support in one state is superb, and the support in the other is nearly non-existent, bordering on dreadful.

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15 hours ago, cncappsjames said:

Support, support, support. Even large nationwide/worldwide companies have dealers that are weak and others that are strong.

I have a customer with operations in multiple states(same dealer, different territories) , for one of their machines (EDM) the support in one state is superb, and the support in the other is nearly non-existent, bordering on dreadful.

Agree 1000%... That goes for anything, Machine tools, software, cutting tools, workholding blah blah blah.

Having experienced absolute !@#$% support, I make the effort to go the distance because I know what it is like as an end user needing to get something sorted quickly. And machine tool support is paramount.

I even provided support to a company the other day, new to the CNC game. They were using Fusion, and couldn't get the right code. Turned up on site, put together a couple of test programmes, found the root cause of the issue (actually two, one was the Fusion post, and the other was the machine tool/setup), gave him the information to give to both of his suppliers, so they could fix the issue. Now he is happy.

Yep, do your research on support. Some of us are lucky that we can call on esteemed colleagues in the USA of course *cough* James *cough* LOL

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52 minutes ago, cncappsjames said:

Thank you. \-8-)

I still remember standing inside that machine tool (leaning on the fixture at the time), while I had you on the phone, talking me through the data acquisition from the probe.

Good times :)

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  • 1 month later...
On 10/17/2022 at 2:42 PM, MrFish said:

Yeah I totally hear you and came out of a shop that we air conditioned and saw a marked improvement in stability of the machines. We could even get away with a HAAS UMC750 for these medical parts with the right techniques.

Currently not an option to temperature control the current facility as we are just sub leasing a corner of a very large workshop. I guess we will have to allow for some inaccuracy's  and deal with them with smart techniques and probing. 

Really just looking for real world opinions on different brands/machines from people that actually use them instead of sales people.

Thanks

Definitely recommend looking at Makino’s DA300 if you haven’t already.

Core-cooled ballscrews, DDM rotary axes (cooled rotor, stator, & housing), moire linear scales, rotary scales, etc. 

The DA300 is extremely accurate and thermally stable to itself. I also would recommend adding a coolant temperature controller (as Mark mentioned) to whatever machine you bring in.

 

Volumetric accuracy check on the DA300 after install.

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  • 3 weeks later...
On 10/17/2022 at 7:55 PM, ?Mark said:

...

@?Mark

I need a favor...

I'm working on some stuff with a customer and CAMplete for their NMV 5000 DCG and it's just not as easy pull out as the customer or I would hope. Do you by chance happen to have a procedure that you can part with to get the following information out of the machine?

  1. SYS-CONF.TXT
    1. System Configuration Data
  2. CNCIDNUM.TXT
    1. CNC ID Information (Options, functions, etc…)
  1. CNC-PARA.TXT
    1. Parameters (axis configuration, center of rotation parameters, etc…)

Or.... anyone else that knows I'd be grateful. 

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