SpiderCool - Anyone using them?

[chris m]

For years, I have been enthralled with SpiderCool coolant nozzles, but we've never pulled the trigger on one. Are any of your guys running them? What are your thoughts about the system?

[chris m]

ttt

 

Nobody running this? Any similar product?

 

C

[Henk]

We had an DMG with the BEMA option.

http://www.bemagmbh.de/english/kuehlmittelhandling/gesteuert_p4.html

It's an great option.

There was a macro that automatically synchronised with the tool lengts.

 

For the Spider-cool:

• i like the oscilating movements from the movie
• dos it adjust automatically with tool lengts ??

 

[chris m]

Thanks for the response, Henk. Yes, the SpiderCool adjusts with tool changes; you "teach" the system the correct position for every tool and use a DPRNT or PUT statement in your toolchange macro to tell the system what tool the machine has in the spindle.

 

C

[chris m]

ttt one more time

[djstedman]

We have them on a bunch of our machines.. honestly they are rather large and since the coolant comes from one direction they often times cannot get the coolant where you need it to be.. If we have work that's got any kind of height and it gets between the cutter and the spidercool unit it basically means you have no coolant on the tool..

 

Because of the problem with the coolant always having to come from one side of the part we generally end up still using loc-line even though we have the spidercool units.

 

One benefit that we do have from them is they also handle air blast so we were able to put airblast in a few machines that didn't have it previously which helped us with some hard machining jobs, however I think we could have found a way to do this just as well without the expense of the spidercool unit especially since the same problems with directionality of the unit mentioned above still happen with the air blast.

 

The size of the units is a real pain if your machine doesn't have a lot of spare room inside.. generally mounting locations are difficult since most CNC's put a premium on space inside the enclosure - which means putting them in a place that probably wouldn't be your first choice.

 

If you can't mount them someplace that gives a clear unobstructed path to the tool at all times there will be a lot of times when you are essentially getting NO coolant on your tools. I have seen them on about 8 different models of machines and I haven't seen one yet that the mounting didn't mean that sometimes your path to the tool was obstructed.

 

Basically .. they look cool in the videos.. and its really great when they work being able to move the coolant line without opening and closing the door 5 times but the reality is they are a gimmick.. a lot of times they don't work well and even when your not using them the unit is constantly there and very often blocking your view of things or just downright getting in the way. After seeing them in action if I were running my own shop there is absolutely no way I would put money into adding them when there are so many other things that money could be better spent on.

[chris m]

Thank you very much for your reply; I appreciate it a lot.

 

Do you have the newer, slimmer version on any of your machines, or are yours the 'original' ( big ) units? I was worried about the size of the older units in the past, but the newer ones look significantly more compact. Truly, our Haas P-Cool unit (2004) is pretty freakin' big, yet rarely gets in the way, and the inside of the machine I am considering is huge around the headstock, so I am not hugely concerned about clearance with the structure.

 

I understand the comments you make about deeper workpieces shielding the tool from the SpiderCool's stream, and we might keep a couple of Loc-Lines available, but most of our work is flat or shallow, so that isn't a huge concern for us.

 

How has the mechanical reliability been? The user-friendliness to the operators?

 

Last question, and I am not at all being a smarta$$, just curious: if they have been lackluster performers for you guys, why do you have a bunch of them?

 

Thanks for your time on this

 

C

[djstedman]

They are the original size .. so the bigger versions, as for reliability they have been good we haven't had any stop working. For flat work I think they would be great but in our case were doing a lot of stuff that's anything but flat. As for why we have so many its because the guy who decided we should get them went 'all in' and had them put on all the machines we had at once.

 

For us the size issue was and is the biggest single issue since pretty much no matter where they wanted to put them they would have interfered with the machine enclosure when the machine was at its travel limits. This meant that they essentially had to hang them under the head beside the spindle nose to keep them from hitting anything which has them taking up about 4 inches of Z under the spindle so were always having to worry about whether or not they will clear or not.

 

To be honest I didn't reply sooner because I didn't want to bash the system, the installers worked with us to do the best they could, the product itself is solid, just from my perspective its not a very versatile system and in the job shop environment that I work in versatility is a much more valuable asset than the convenience of directing the coolant.

[chris m]

 

I can respect that; they won't hear about anything from me.

 

Thanks for your insight

 

C

[Joe788]

Chris, is there any reason you can't just install a slightly larger coolant pump? I realize this can cause other problems on some machines with smaller coolant tanks, but maybe just 20-30% more coolant volume/pressure would be enough that you're not adjusting loc lines?

[chris m]

Joe, the machine has a coolant tank the size of my lunchbox, so I don't know how much more volume we can run without an auxiliary tank.

 

The bigger issue for us is that our lot sizes are small and cycle times are short; I don't want the guys dicking around with adjusting coolant lines for longer than the job runs, and I don't want to blow up tools because the guys didn't adjust the coolant. The Haas P-Cool works nice, so I figured I would finally choke up a few bucks and try an aftermarket version on one of the Okumas.

 

C

[GoetzInd]

One thing may be to look at a 1000psi pump. They usually have about a 70 gal tank. Add some widgets from these guys and your set!

 

http://www.qpmproducts.com/

 

Mike

[chris m]

QPM rocks! We use their Presto Port product to plumb our lathes with high pressure coolant.

 

C

[potatohead]

We have fitted BEMA units on our machines here in the UK. They were fitted by a company called Service 2000 who are the UK distributors for them.

We went for the programmable ones that follow the tool, really great bits of kit. We now have 8 machines fitted with them and they have already made a big difference in our machining times as the operators can just watch the machine work rather than going in and out of the machine to adjust the coolant nozzles every time we changed tools.

 

http://www.service-2000.co.uk/

http://www.service-2000.co.uk/bema/

[chris m]

That looks like nice stuff; thanks for sharing your experience

 

I'm still on the fence, but will post my impressions if we buy one

 

C