KME Tombstone and Mastercam Help

[Mick]

Vericut can handle it too

[taperlength]

 

 

wonder what those tombstones use for a power source if signalling is wireless?

 

KME website says it has rechargeable batteries inside the tombstone that last 8 hours.

[mkd]

KME website says it has rechargeable batteries inside the tombstone that last 8 hours.

Well I'm surprised! Wonder what happens when they run out in the middle of a cycle? (maybe i should read the website myself, lol).

 At least batteries are better than a Hamster wheel.

[neurosis]

TopSolid V7 can handle the post & simulation for this. 4 years ago I was programming 7 axis HBMs with V6 with full simulation.

 

 

Well this was the direction we ended up taking.  Were pretty happy with the results so far.

 

http://youtu.be/E55Nb7Ai_b0

 

 

[jlw™]

Nice!  Hope your solution works well for you, after-all the end goal is a quality part that earns money.

[Sticky]

How are you finding the reliability of the wireless system? A shop across the street from me has a couple and they've been quite unreliable. I think they almost have the bugs worked out but they've have some spectacular failures.

[neurosis]

So far we've just been running a few tests and no issues.. we wont know for sure until we start cutting parts on it.

 

Any clue what their issues were?

[Sticky]

Losing signal, not receiving any signal at all, brake not working, battery dying substantially faster than kme claims, but the big one was the I think the servo driving the C malfunction while drilling a hole on the side of the part, meaning that while the drill was going in the C started oscillating, which of course roasted the drills.

[specv]

Just sent a purchase order for one of these as well, we got a single platter due to part size but will probably get another on with 4 platters for smaller parts.

[?Mark]

So how is the reliability/rigidity of those so far?

We're looking at them as well. Will it (rotary brakes) handle heavy cuts and tough materials? So far all I've seen is aluminium cuts.

 

TIA

[specv]

So how is the reliability/rigidity of those so far?

We're looking at them as well. Will it (rotary brakes) handle heavy cuts and tough materials? So far all I've seen is aluminium cuts.

 

TIA

 

I can't speak to the rigidity but my understanding is that there are no brakes, this is a harmonic drive (think egg shaped gear inside a ring gear) so the engagement of the gears is where you get your holding power with slight help of the servo. The one we ordered has 800 ftbs of torque, which also translates into 800 ftlbs of holding power. 

 

Hopefully ours shipped yesterday, and it will be here next week (installed).

[Craig-B]

I've programmed these in the past with  a 4 axis post and added the 5th rotation in with a misc integer and reals in Mastercam. I put the 5 axis rotations on different layers and controlled them by the misc integer and reals.   I also created a macro B program to rotate the  individual platters  on the machine by the output from the misc integer and reals mastercam.    to avoid all the DPRNT statement in the NC code.

 

The misc integer output the platter sequence:

Single output:

--------------------------

1 = Rotary platter 1 

2 = Rotary platter 2

3 = Rotary platter 3

4 = Rotary platter 4

 

Duel output:

--------------------------

5 = Rotary platters 1 & 3

6 = Rotary platters 2 & 4

7 = Rotary platters 1 & 2

8 = Rotary platters 3 & 4

 

All output:

--------------------------

9 = All Rotary platters 

 

 

On the The machine the Output was (G65P9100 R5  C90.0) This would rotate rotary platters 1 & 3 90.0 degrees.

[specv]

here is our new single 14" platter, its the largest motor they have with 800 ft lbs of torque.

[jlw™]

can it be ran as a rotary or index only?

[specv]

Technically its index only, although they said it can rotate while milling, just no feedrate adjustment and it is not timed to the machine axes. It really just makes our horizontals 4+1.

[jlw™]

Can you put up a snippet of code for it?

[Craig-B]

The code that I used look like this to rotate C axis 90 degrees,

POPEN

DPRNT[C1*90] 

m21

PCLOS

 

[Joe6Pack]

Our 2nd one is on the way. Two platters, B0 and B180. We use our Makino post and currently punch in the G65 M98 P commands for power on, rotations, confirmation codes, and power off. Turn the power on and off only when it's in the CNC and the battery will last quite a while. haven't gotten around to updating the post but we've been told it shouldn't be a problem.

[?Mark]

12 hours ago, Joe6Pack said:

Our 2nd one is on the way. Two platters, B0 and B180. We use our Makino post and currently punch in the G65 M98 P commands for power on, rotations, confirmation codes, and power off. Turn the power on and off only when it's in the CNC and the battery will last quite a while. haven't gotten around to updating the post but we've been told it shouldn't be a problem.

If the power is off and you have a heavy fixture or a part clamped to the rotary, will it still keep it's position?

Power off= no brake, correct? I could see this causing the rotary to slip out of position.

[specv]

3 hours ago, Mark @ PPG said:

If the power is off and you have a heavy fixture or a part clamped to the rotary, will it still keep it's position?

Power off= no brake, correct? I could see this causing the rotary to slip out of position.

There is no brake at all in these units, they are harmonic drive. Also they have absolute encoders and flash memory for long term storage of zero location even when there is no battery connected.

[crazy^millman]

I have been the KME offices and seen them built, they do excellent work and what I consider a very good product. I have no reservations recommend their products to any customer. No I get nothing for saying that I have seen the units 1st hand and liked what I saw.