Crankshaft

[LIGHTNING_]

We have a customer that would like a Crankshaft made. He has given us the file. Well the question I have is where to start. I'm not wet behind the ears when it comes to 4th axis programming.

Is there a sample of a crankshaft on the ftp site or can someone send me a sample to see how they have gone about it.

 

Thanks

Lightning

[Hardmill]

You got a file, do you mean you want to model it now??

 

 

PEACE

[LIGHTNING_]

No, I need to toolpath it.

[Hardmill]

OK gotcha, put it on the ftp site for the boys to look at.

They'll be able to give better suggestions if they can

see the file.

 

 

PEACE

[LIGHTNING_]

I have ftp under the mc9 folder zipped called crankshaft.

 

Thanks

[jeff]

quote:

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4th axis programming

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why not use a lathe??

seems like the only way to go.

[Müřlıń®]

defiantely looks like a mill/turn to me....

 

Must be a prototype....

 

When your customer needs some forgings made, send him my way..

 

I designed 9 crankshaft dies for race cars

last year for a forger out in Kali....

 

[ 02-28-2006, 09:17 AM: Message edited by: Murlin ]

[Quickmike]

In 2002 at the IMTS Mazak Integrex booth I saw a crankshaft being made. I think thats the right year. I talked with the guy who was doing it. He said it took him about 6 months to write a program for it. I think he did it in visual basic but I'm not sure. He was from England with a heavy accent. If I can remember correctly he said it could make one in 8 hours. I think what he did with the program was make it so someone could plug in the crank throw, where the journals are, size of the journals, size of everthing and locations of everthing, throw in a billet and wind up with a crank. I was pretty amazed none the less. Can't remember about thge lobe part though. Does anyone else remember seeing this?

[Bill Sutton@Accurate Machine]

Follow up on Crankshaft.... This is 48"(we dont have a lathe that can do that) long. Our customer believes we can do it all on the 4th axis. The end will be done on the lathe and the rest on the 4th...So still looking for more suggestions or ways to tell this guy he needsto farm it out to an actual shop that have the equipment to do this.

[crazy^millman]

Without looking at the part. I am thinking you need to use curve 5ax in 4axis output. You then need create the toolaxis control for it as well. The idea with the tool axis control is to give a lead in and lead out if you are in a tight are if not plane should work just fine. You could use axis sub for any that are on the center line but any that are lobs will need to apporach using 5axis toolpath outputting in a 4 axis mode. $ axis toolpaths do ok but feel you get more control using the 5axis toolpaths. If I get free tonight I will take a look at it at home and see if i can give you some ideas. I did some smaller cranks years ago using a CNC lathe and dead centers stuck in a set of speacil amde soft jaws that drove the crake while I had it between the centers. They were rough casted so not that bad on the machine. I use counter weights as well to keep the machine happy when I was running it as 1200 rpms.

 

HTH

[Guest CNC Apps Guy 1]

Yeah it's possible to do on a 4th axis mill... but... it's not the best way to do it. The best way to do it is on a Mazak Integrex/Mori Seiki MT style machine, that way you can do the oil galley holes and the off axis stuff. I'm pretty sure you probably never like to turn away work but I would kick it to a friend's shop with one of these machines. Hopefully your customer will appreciate your honesty.

 

It's not that it can't be done, it's just that it's not practical to do on a mill. The best tool for the job is the RIGHT tool for the job, and a mill is not the right tool for this type of application.

 

JM2C

[Müřlıń®]

I think it can be done on 4th axis ok since it will have to be sent out and have the journals ground in anyway.

 

If it's a prototype, that's one thing. But if your customer wants alot of them....I would outsource them.

[chris m]

QuickMike

 

The guy's name was probably Martin and he's South African [with that Afrikaaner accent]. He is unbelievable with those machines and when he was up our way on our [failed] Integrex turnkey he said that crankshaft he did was a complete dog-and-pony deal, no tolerances to worry about, no finish requirements, etc, but still took years off his life...

 

C

[John Summers]

Create a cylinder one cutter diameter shorter than the journal. 5-axis flowline machine in the circumferential direction (probably just 2 cuts). To rough, offset in Y one cutter radius, and more if there's a lot of stock. To finish, just reduce the Y offset to zero, maybe in several passes. What this avoids is stock coming up under the tool, effectively a lead/lag type of operation.

[betts]

How's that for service?

[Chipmakr]

Here is Martin Roderick's website link. He is the fellow who wrote the crankshaft software for integrex machines. He has his own gig now.

 

http://www.globalindsolutions.com/index.htm

[IndSolutions]

I'm the guy that wrote the crankshaft program at Mazak. I did the coding section and another guy did the user interface. It was originally done for Ford EMDO(prototype workshop) in Detroit. The show version of the crank was just to show capabilty of the machine. We sold many of these machines and the software packages to various crank manufacturers across the country.

Many of the companies are into racing but some are compressor manufacturers.

The outcome at Ford was that they had never made a prototype as acurately as we did. We had almost no runout and angular accuracy was spot on. We produced a solid billet crank in less than 8 hour from core hardened 38Rc steel using standard/off the shelf tools. I have cut small block V8 cranks from forgings in just over 2 hours complete. Never having to remove the part from the machine certainly helps accuracy. All that remains is to gring the journals and balance.

One of the reasons we did the software package is so we could turn the eccentric journals and no cam package has that capability as a standard feature.

The software was also written to pull data from a design database and generate a program with no user input. Ford gave us an award for that.

The limit to the Integrex style machine is limited to your programming capability alone. If you can visualise it, you can make it.

[HevyMetl]

Hey Martin welcome to the forum. It is great to have someone of your expierence in here. I saw the part run and was totally amazed.