Our New Makino D500 & MMC2... Sweet!!

[Kevangel]

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But seriously, I don’t think our company would have been ready for this machine any earlier.

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Good insight, that machine would sink most shops and a few will rise to a higher plane. Your shop owner is just one of those owners, right market, right people and I am sure He is just better at Business.

 

I have seen shop owners with everything paid for and making "obscene amounts of money" eventually grow until they fall over. (market changes, owner is up to 200 people and not hungry anymore I guess...kids are working in the family Biz and borrowing too much)..only 15 percent of businesses survive second generation.

 

More Power to you guys and your boss is fortunate to have a guy like you Shawn and he knows it...same for you Crazy..

[melliott6]

I would like to add one note of caution. This is a great machine and I would hate to see anyone crash it. GET VERIFICATION SOFTWARE and run your program through it before putting it in the hands of the operator... unless you have one you trust explicitly. I use Vericut and it has saved my *&^% and the machine more than once. I would not leave home without it :-) Enjoy and Good Luck.

 

Mike

[SydwazShawn]

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Good insight, that machine would sink most shops and a few will rise to a higher plane. Your shop owner is just one of those owners, right market, right people and I am sure He is just better at Business.

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Exactly! We had the money long before now, but we didn’t want it to be a glorified vertical mill! I needed the confidence in myself to know I could program it, and also know deep down that no matter what thru thick and thin, that I would make it work! I made sure I understood what it would take for tooling, fixturing software and how much time I was going to give out of my life. Once I knew I was ready, I let him know!! I told him it’s all or nothing if we do this! Finally we hashed out what he thought we didn’t need, and what I knew we needed, and finally we got on the same page!! That’s when we both new that this is our future…

 

After all, if it fails it doesn’t just hurt the bosses pocket, it hurts mine and the rest of the crew! I can tell you I want my profit sharing as much as anybody!!!!!

 

 

 

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More Power to you guys and your boss is fortunate to have a guy like you Shawn and he knows it...same for you Crazy..

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I would like to add one note of caution. This is a great machine and I would hate to see anyone crash it. GET VERIFICATION SOFTWARE and run your program through it before putting it in the hands of the operator... unless you have one you trust explicitly. I use Vericut and it has saved my *&^% and the machine more than once. I would not leave home without it :-) Enjoy and Good Luck.

 

Mike

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We ended up going with ICAM for verification and post. I told my boss, I don’t fell comfortable running a 500k machine without it! He agreed, after some persuasion!

[Mic6]

So what's new?

[SydwazShawn]

So it’s been about two weeks that has past and not much has changed as far as machine goes. They have been tweaking in the machine and cleaning up loose ends. As of Thursday they would have been all done, but we ran into on problem with the machine. It turns out that it leeks coolant were it drains into the chip conveyer. We opted for the 900 liter tank and it is the first one ever on the D500 in the states, so it has a few issues. They just have to make some drip panels for it and it will be fixed, no big deal but we wont be able to run coolant for another week.

 

As of Friday they were able to get the perimeter fence around the MMC2. Apparently Makino is now sending out MMC2 sign boards to put on the fence. We were one of the first to get one! The fence guy had some extra time and made a cool border for it. It looks pretty professional instead of being zip tide to the fence.

 

Come Monday my training starts for the machine. The past weeks I have been scrambling to get our verification software working. I had a heck of a time getting it installed on Windows 7… I got it working last Thursday and finished my demo program. I also had to make my fixturing for this machine. That took me almost 4 days in itself, along with machining parts that are due. Needless to say I had some anxiety the last couple of weeks, about not getting everything done. Luckily it all turned out fine!

 

So, till I actually cut a part, here are some pics of the fence sign and my demo part I will be running.

 

 

I put up my HD GoPro to tape my training. After going over the Pro5 controll I doubt I will need to go back and watch my vids because the control is really easy!

 

 

 

[SydwazShawn]

My demo part I made up. This part took me 12 hours to program because I had know idea what I was doing! I finally started to figure out how to apply the 5axis toolpaths at around the 11th hour! lol..

 

 

 

ICAM simulation and post..

 

 

Never mind the long tool stick out, I didnt have time to make my tool definitions yet!

 

[SydwazShawn]

My dovetail fixtures I made. They are a cross between Techni-grip, and Raptor work holding, with some Shawn flare! I made them so they can stack side be side to make one long row. I will have a 1.00, 2.00, and 3.00 inch variation.

 

The base..

 

 

 

Damn Ano bleed out on the red clamp!! And this was the good one!!

 

[crazy^millman]

Good Job and thought ICAM would be a good choice looked at it last year, but think we will be going with Predator since they now support Mill/Turns.

 

Still wish you guys were closer that looks like a sweet set-up.

[Mic6]

DAMN! All I gotta say is that is some bad A$$-ness right there. Right on Shawn. Keep the updates coming.

[Joe788]

Thanks for the update Shawn. Have you gone to ICAM training already? What do you think of the software so far?

[SydwazShawn]

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Thanks for the update Shawn. Have you gone to ICAM training already? What do you think of the software so far?

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Ha,ha training! What training? I had to wing it...

 

We didn’t buy the post mod package so all we have is the simulation and they supplied the post. At first I was freaking out because of how hard it was to load onto my computer. It took two weeks with a bunch of emails to get it running properly. Most of the problems turned out to be because of Windows 7 administrator settings. After the IT guy fixed it up for me the install went way better. Apparently when you go to run anything in windows 7 you need to right click and then select -run as administrator- even though I was the administrator. Anyway that’s fixed and I won’t have to worry about it anymore.

 

As far as the software goes, I like it so far. I have only been playing with it since Thursday, so I don’t know how everything works yet. The person doing my post has been very helpful on getting this thing running properly. They talked directly with Makino, so that helped out a lot. In the future I will have a few Webex training classes, but I don’t think I will need to have an offsite class, unless I was doing post mods. As I move forward I will update on how and what Icam has to offer. I will tell you one thing, I set the facet to .0001 accuracy, and had no problems simulating all that 5axis code. I think Mcam verify would have choked on the first tool path. Ok that was exaggerating a little, but still it seems super stable.

[SydwazShawn]

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Good Job and thought ICAM would be a good choice looked at it last year, but think we will be going with Predator since they now support Mill/Turns.

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Icam supports mill/turn also! Or do you already have Predator?

[Ron Branch @ Verisurf]

Predator is about 1/8 the cost of ICAM so this more of a money issue than what I would like to see us get issue. Honestly still think Vericut is the leader, but ICAM from what I have seen is a close second. Predator was good when I used it years ago when working with Gcode and now they support mill/turn look forward to have a low cost good enough to see it system.

[Mic]

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Honestly still think Vericut is the leader

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Yes I also think VeriCut is number 1 for NC simulation, but they don't have a postprocessor built in like ICAM and CamPlete does.

 

Personally I like CamPlete, very easy to use and you can easilly change the postprocessor your self.

[GoetzInd]

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The trainer flies out March 29th.

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Soooo.... Where are the chips?

 

Mike

[Kevangel]

Wow simply wow..thanks for posting..

[Joe788]

Shawn, you're testing our patience!

[Mic6]

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Shawn, you're testing our patience

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Seriously!

[SydwazShawn]

So finally we made some chips! This last week flew by so fast. I totally love this new control. It’s so easy to use! We ended up cutting one of our demo parts out of PET plastic and one out of 6061 ALUM. We have a few issues with the post we need to fix, but all in all everything worked out.

 

The post is kind of setup as a head/head machine. Between rotation moves on the C axis, it wants to move X into position like if the C axis didn’t rotate on the table but on the head. We just need it fixed, so it’s made for table/table output. Other than that just need to place comments in a better spot, and M01 in a few places I like to see them. Just little stuff like that! Looks like ICAM has some work to do Monday.

 

 

I also just want to give a shout out to TCP!! Lol! This is going to be my new friend. Four months ago I didn’t even know what it was, and now I don’t think I would ever want to run a machine without it. It’s going to make life so easy, to say the least.

 

 

So I will probably post up a question about 5axis toolpaths! If anyone that’s savvy and is reading this thread, maybe I could get some insight. On certain surfaces my tool path was very smooth with all axis’s feeding smooth and fast. Now on other surfaces the machine had a hard time feeding over them fast an smooth. It would dance around a lot because it was trying to hold to the surface vectors I guess. Is this all in how the surface was made, or is there a way to get the toolpath to flow better over the surface thru the advanced 5ax page? I’m sure it’s a little of both. I found out that between cut depths or contours, it was better to turn of rapid and use a fast feed rate. It was way smoother between transitions.

 

Well this is my first real 5 axis part! This part is not that pretty and is rough, but I learned a lot and hope to learn a lot more as time goes on. There is so much to learn in the 5axis side of things, so I’m sure I will have tons of threads on how to do things proper. So here you go on the pictures and I would have had an HD vid on Youtube, but for some reason my camera cut out 10 minutes into this part. I will for sure have videos later as time goes on.

 

Shawn…

 

 

Roughed out T1

 

 

 

Checking broken tool

 

 

[SydwazShawn]

I wish my video worked, it would have been so much better to show my problem areas with the dancing/slow toolpaths and stuff.

 

 

Finishing with 1/2 ball mill..

 

 

 

 

 

All done!

 

[SydwazShawn]

Here is the alum one. It looks ok! The surfaces you can tell left marks in the same way the pattern of the surface grid is, if you un-shade the surface in Mcam. This is what leads me to believe to get a better (smoother)toolpath, the surface itself needs to be built differently.

 

Oh well, alot to learn! I'm sure a year from now I will be looking at this part and laughing at the rookie-ness of it, if thats a word!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Thanks everyone for looking at my pictures. From here on out I will post links to vids when I get them done. It probably wont be for a while, cuz I need to make some money with this thing!

 

Anyway thanks again for all the compliments and stuff, I can tell you its been a fun project, Shawn..

[Ron Branch @ Verisurf]

Are you using Inverse time? If so make sure someone did not limit it to 999.999. Look and see if they made it go out to 9999.999 if the control goes out to 5 places for inverse time kick it up that high. Might also check your point setting on the toolpaths. Some controls like more points and then smooth inside the control and other machines require you to smooth out the toolpath. Good looking stuff that is for sure.

[SydwazShawn]

Ron, I'm not using inverse time with the TPC. As far as the point to point tool paths, I had them small moves. The SGI smoothing in the control was slowing it down so it would actually follow the path that the post wrote. I had it set on the second tightest tolerance for the machine. I would like to find a way to smooth it out in Mcam if I could.

[MotorCityMinion]

If I'm not mistaken, those pallets on the Makino's are pretty soft. You may want to consider a sub-table. Also helps to keep those gnarly looking spindle notches from haunting you in the future when you get a little closer than you expected. Kinda freaky watching that thing run I bet.

[Ron Branch @ Verisurf]

Well should have some chord height settings recommend by the manufacture that works best on this machine. I would try a couple different settings and see what responds the best. I am assuming you use the advanced 5 axis toolpaths. On some of them you have the quality setting you have a tolerance turn it up and down. Make sure you always using the advanced panel and in the and in there you have advanced options. Click on that and see if the slow and safe path creation or adaptive cuts setting makes a difference.

 

HTH