Makino A51, horizontal and PS95 with 4th axis rotary.

[Thee Rickster ™]

Good Morning fine ppl.

 

I am writing this for our Busy CNC manager/programmer/setup GURU, Peter, who is beyond

swamped in new and existing production manufacturing.

 

He is not a Forum member as of yet but will reg. and chime in, in the near future.

he will be monitoring this topic as a guest until then

 

Our shop is expanding rapidly, 1/2 way through moving from 25,000 sq ft. for 118,000 sq. ft.

purchased yet another seat of MC recently.

 

Our post casting machine shop is moved in and fully Operational.

Our castings are mainly all-356, non and T6.

 

Machine shop is currently Programming with X5 Mu1.

 

We purchased a new Makino PS95 and a 4 yr old A51 horizontal.

we have many different Haas machines also.

 

Our concerns on the PS95 are to prevent crashes with holder and cutters.

We are currently looking into Vericut and an operator suggest adding Power-mill

as he is proficient in it.

 

We would like to stick with MasterCam and prove that it can do the job.

 

The A51horizontal concerns are of the same nature including programming it

and have an 'edit free post' while using the pallet changer. In-house will most likely be contacted

to create the post.

 

If any one using these types of machines or similar ones could give us some incite on the best way to

get the A51 dialed in and running and the preventative holder/spindle crashing possibilities,

we are all ears.

 

Thanks in advance for any and all help.

 

Regards,

Rick

[GoetzInd]

We have an A51 with a dialed post and it is 100% edit free. We post directly to the machine and is very reliable. I have our entire holder library modeled w/ the spindle nose for interference checking. Mastercam holders function is a disaster though as many have said.

 

Mike

[Jeremy Herron@DBS Solutions™]

I have some customers with them and edit free posts, so I have no doubt you can do the job in mastercam, The holders thing and verification is getting better, but they are still no substitue for Vericut IMHO, I will save the rest for PM.

[Redfire427]

That PS95 is a sweet machine. We had one at my previous place of employment and it was very fast and reliable. The only drawback was we had to run all our programs off a flash card as it doesn't have a data centre like the other Makino's. This machine will make your Haas's look like garbage........ wait a minute, Haas's are garbage.

 

Carmen

[Jayson Kramer]

I have a customer out here that designs in Catia and programs all in MC and a has a few of them makes racing motors for the indy cars and have no issues.

 

I have another that has these to and use MC and no issue and love these machines and they make medical tools.

[Joe788]

Rickster, are you just gonna be machining castings with those machines? Or are they going to be making molds too?

[Thee Rickster ™]

Mike, that is awesome, you will be hounded for info as time goes on....

 

Jeremy, we are pushing for Vericut in a big way.

 

Redfire, we are steering towards Makino for all future purchases and machine upgrades.

 

Jay, that is great to hear as you can see we are ramping up to take on greater challenges.

 

Joe, just aluminum casting of various sizes and multiple fixturing for higher production numbers.

 

this is great info, keep it coming

 

thanks in advance!

[GoetzInd]

Mike, that is awesome, you will be hounded for info as time goes on....

 

Don't hesitate if you have any questions. I think Joe runs his HMC's pretty much the exact same way we do too.

 

Mike

[Guest]

Hopefully they'll hire a programmer Rick

 

[Thee Rickster ™]

Hopefully they'll hire a programmer Rick

 

 

why you!!!! ...... lol

 

I am,,, the mold man....

 

We have able programmers in that department.

horizontal programming may be challenging, i have Faith in them as in-house

is right around the corner to call for training.

 

[Jayson Kramer]

But remember you have us. there are allot of us HMC programmers here to help I do allot of this over the years.

[Joe788]

Rick, I think Vericut may be a little over kill for the machining of castings, unless the machining is crazy. On the plus side, you might think about convincing the other division to buy Vericut, and then hijack it for your own use on molds.

 

Do you guys have Solidworks, or at the very least, the solids package for Mastercam? Mastercam verify is very good for horizontals when you use holder definitions with the spindle housing included, and the entire tombstone as the verify stock.

 

[Thee Rickster ™]

Jay, I usually come here first and in-house 2nd, cus if they are busy, the forum may get me the info

before they become UN-busy...

 

Joe, we have 3 seats of solid works (all on maintenance) and My seat of MC is the only one with solids.

If MC solids will help post machining, it could easily be added.

 

Vericut is in near future prospects.

Once My division completes the long arduous move so we are a complete family again,

then we will be full steam ahead for incorporating a lot of new technology/software.

 

 

Cheers

Rick

[maestro]

We have an A51 and a82 outfitted with 5th axis rotary tables. Mostly aluminum aerospace stuff, lots of full 5 axis motion as well. These run pretty much 20 hrs a day. Both programmed with Mastercam. We do run everything thru vericut here. Really sweet machines.

[GoetzInd]

We have an A51 and a82 outfitted with 5th axis rotary tables. Mostly aluminum aerospace stuff, lots of full 5 axis motion as well. These run pretty much 20 hrs a day. Both programmed with Mastercam. We do run everything thru vericut here. Really sweet machines.

 

Maestro,

I am getting an A61 quoted with a Nikken DD rotary for doing full five. Are you happy with this setup compared to a trunnion machine?

 

Mike

[MLS]

Hey Rickster.

 

If you are dealing with only Mastercam, I would stick with their posts. Perfectly capable.

 

If you are dealing with multiple source codes.. (i.e. CATIA, NX, Powermill, APT/Mastercam NCI) then there are posts like ICAM and Austin NC that can take either so you have one translation software instead of many to deal with. I would stick with one CAM software if it were my shop, because it is a PITA trying to jump from one software to another back and forth.

 

If you are wanting verification, IMO Vericut is the answer. The time I would spend trying to verify something in CATIA OR Mastercam would be considerably more plus less reliable as it is prior post apt/nci to gcode translation and without machine/control specs. Never used Solidworks, but theoretically so long as it can export STL models oriented the way they are in Mastercam, then the need for solids in mastercam would be to use the MCAM to Vericut interface.

 

We do all production though, tooling/molds/etc. might be a bit different payoff.

[maestro]

Maestro,

I am getting an A61 quoted with a Nikken DD rotary for doing full five. Are you happy with this setup compared to a trunnion machine?

 

We started out like a lot of shops getting our feet wet with a Haas VF5 with a TR210 trunnion table. We bought the 2 Makinos together. The Makinos hmc's with the added rotary tables program just like the trunnion style machines. Ours have Makino's SGI high speed machining option which works great. You don't want to use Vericuts optipath option with SGI as the changing feedrates that Optipath adds can produce unpredictable results. Makino recommends not using Optipath with machines equipped with SGI. One of the best things is like most hmc's, chip handling and evacuation is better than most verticles trunnion style machines. One drawback to the Pro5 controls that we have is the small amount of nc memory. Not a lot of memory for programs. We do have internal memory cards for added memory on each one. We had our post modified to output seperate files broken out by each tool as it is used. These we put in a M198 folder on the the internal card. The post also outputs a main program file that goes into the main nc memory and calls each of the files in the M198 folder.

[Zoober]

Maestro,

I am getting an A61 quoted with a Nikken DD rotary for doing full five. Are you happy with this setup compared to a trunnion machine?

 

Mike

Don't mean to step on Maestro, but I've programmed and run numerous Makino and Niigata table/table's, and I find they generally have less "get to" restrictions (and more rotary travel) than many horizontal trunnions.

Many trunnions cannot cover the full pallet in Y with A-90

Did many large Stators and impellers on t/t that trunnions could not do.

[maestro]

Robert you are right. Depending on how long the part is and what kind of cut you are doing, you might not be able to reach some features in the Y- direction.

[Thee Rickster ™]

bumps

[Thee Rickster ™]

Bump