Okuma OSP Twin Spindle/ Twin Turret

[PE @ IHS]

Hi Guys

 

Has anyone used Mastercam to program twin spindle, twin turret Okuma lathes, with live tooling on both turrets and y axis on the main spindle?

 

We have a possible customer requiring a post for such a machine, and I am curious if anyone has run this particular beast and how well MC handled the job. I do realize that the new Sync Lathe is supposed to make this type of application easier to program, but that doesn't help me right now.

 

Thanks

 

Peter Eigler

[Chips Ahoy]

Hello Peter. We had an Okuma LT10M and it was a nightmare with mastercam. There were to many "fudgefactors" that we had to put into the post to get it to output anything even close. You need a very excellent post writer for this machine. You will also pay a pretty penny for the post and still have to debug it for years to come. Rick

[chris m]

Gentlemen

 

I'm with Rick. We have an LT15M with the U100L control and do the programming as if it were two machines, then marry the programs together with the different peculiar coding that Okuma requires. This leads to a lot of "Asynchronous" alarms until you get the hang of it, but is still pretty effective. Everyone that I've spoken to about these machines says that "no one" has a post that will properly generate code for this machine. I wouldn't swear to that, but I know I've not found anyone who says they have it.

 

On another front, the LT specialist from my distributor says that the Okuma IGF shop-floor system writes a very useable program for the machines as long as you don't try to edit the code itself. The hangup there is, I guess, that the IGF program is constantly switching back and forth from the A-turret (G13) mode to the B-turret (G14) mode which makes the code an unbelievable nightmare to read.

 

Why you would want to program a machine like that on the floor is, however, a mystery...

 

If anybody out there has a good post for this, please, prove Rick and me wrong, I'm sure we'll both jump in line to get it

[PE @ IHS]

Thanks for the response guys. I am sure that a post can be developed, the question is at what cost.

 

There are more and more multi axis lathes and mills out there, since they greatly reduce cycle time and operator cost. Hopefully Mastercam continues to develop to get better and better at these specialized applications.

 

Hey....people said that the Mazak Integrex post was impossible and they were wrong.....

 

Peter Eigler

[chris m]

Anytime

 

Beware of the "lower cycle time" idea though, any of my 3 machine cells (2 lathes & a mill) will stomp my LT15M for run time on the same piece...

 

...however, since I don't need a guy in front of the LT all day...

 

Low Operator dependency..good

High cycle time..bad

[Guest CNC Apps Guy 1]

What I have done when programming for Upper/Lower Turret Machines in the past is create two groups. One group Upper turret, second group lower turret.

 

Draw the full part, broken at the center line. Upper chain - upper turret, lower chain, lower turret. In the operations, I set up the tools in their correct orientation, yadda, yadda, yadda.

 

For each group, I assign a different NCI file name and they will post to two programs, then I add in the wait codes and things generally go well with it that way.

 

JM2C

[PE @ IHS]

Hi James

 

Would you have an .mc8 or .mc9 file handy that you have done for twin spindle/ twin turret lathes? (I can't ever get on the FTP, so please e-mail me one if you can dig one up).

 

I have programmed a few of them, but would be interested in seeing someone else's approach.

 

thanks

 

Peter Eigler

[Mick]

James,

 

Could you put some samples of that up on the FTP? A local shop here who has a couple of twin axis Okuma lathes has just bought Mastercam, and they'd be very interested to see an example of how you program the upper and lower turrets as you explained..

 

Thanks in advance..

 

Mike

[chris m]

James

 

Are you talking twin-spindle, twin-turret or single-spindle, twin turret?

 

I primarily turn the first side of a part in the "main" spindle (bar-fed collet chuck (Production Dynamics chucks rock, by the way)) then do a cutoff/pickoff routine and turn the second side on the right "sub" spindle with little or no "assist turning." I'm not sure that I'm turning like you are; would your method would work for this?

 

Inquiring minds want to know

Thanks

 

C

[Guest CNC Apps Guy 1]

I'l se if I can dig up an old example. I've not done much with lathe 9.

 

I'll find one tonight.

[Guest CNC Apps Guy 1]

I could not find a file that I'm able to share. I was looking through the Mastercam Samples and "Drill.mc*" (file is available in V8 and V9. Thes has both halves of the part. Go into the Operatins Manager and delete the operation that's in there. Rename the the Group to something like, "O1111". Do all the toolpaths you expect to do on the upper turret. After you complete those, create a new Group and name it somehting like "O1112". Do all the operations you expect to do on the lower turret. For these toolpaths, you'll need to edit the tool. Go to the tool Setup page on the tool and tell it that the tool is on the lower turret. You'll need to do this for every tool. You can Save these tools so you only have to do it once.

 

Hope that helps.