Horizontal help (new machine porn too)

[Matt Berube at Ferron Mold]

For some years, Ferron Mold and Tool has been way behind on our milling capabilities.  After much machine shopping over the past several months, I am very pleased to introduce our new Makino A-61nx!  60 Tool ATC, 500mm Pallet, 14,000 RPM CAT 40 spindle, Makino Pro 6 control.  Arguably our first premium quality machine tool and our first horizontal.

I'd also like to ask for any and all advice from Horizontal Machining experts here.  I am in the process of figuring out machine simulation and plan to start playing around with the MPMaster post today to see if that will work for us.  I am still not sure exactly what I even need for a post and whether or not macros or other complex features will be necessary. 

I am in a little over my head and will need some help getting things all set up and working properly.

Without further delay, here is your porn:

 

[Guest]

Nice machines 

Much of what you'll want will be determined by your work.....

The kind of work I put into HMC's is all high production quantity work....the highest density tombstone I have done where I'm at now is 96 pcs....that are completed in 2 ops on the same tombstone...

My post will output the origin information directly and that is read into the machines via a G10 line....Mazaks utilize internal subs, so post has been tweaked to handle that.....we use Tool Life Management T, H & D values are output appropriately....I only use macros for specific tasks....broaching, engraving, probing and such..... 

 

 

 

[THEE THAINZ™]

Bob Wolcott has several in his shop and would be a great source. But alas it will take the all mighty Daniel to send Bob an email and let him know he can now log in since he got locked out when emastercam changed the system a while back.

[Matt Berube at Ferron Mold]

1 hour ago, JParis said:

Nice machines 

Much of what you'll want will be determined by your work.....

The kind of work I put into HMC's is all high production quantity work....the highest density tombstone I have done where I'm at now is 96 pcs....that are completed in 2 ops on the same tombstone...

My post will output the origin information directly and that is read into the machines via a G10 line....Mazaks utilize internal subs, so post has been tweaked to handle that.....we use Tool Life Management T, H & D values are output appropriately....I only use macros for specific tasks....broaching, engraving, probing and such..... 

 

 

 

Our work is going to be exactly the opposite of what you are doing.  Mostly single piece setups of low quantity mold components.  Right out of the gate, I need to figure out if a particularly large job (32 x 32 x 1.0 - 210 cavity mold plate) will fit into this machine.  It's gonna be close.

[crazy^millman]

Will a Reverse direction Right Angle plate Work? I have used many Custom made Rihtangle plates over the years advantage is keeping the width of a part more centered to the pallet verses trying to stick on the outside of a tomb. I have even done double small columns shifted to the back of the tomb to keep the larger parts centered. Really comes down to how much you can swing when doing a pallet change. In some places I have seen the plate loaded into the machine and the part that wouldn't go through the pallet change, but would run on the machine. Kind of defeats the purpose of a pallet changer, but you do what you need to get the job done. Many different options just comes down to what you want and how you want to go about it.

Mastercam machine sim tied to a post will do a good job for what you need, but if you want to step up to full verification then there are several CAV options to choose from. 

[GoetzInd]

Hi Matt,

      We have 3 generations of Makino 1 series machines and currently already have 5 NX-B machines (PRO 6).  If you would like, PM me and we could talk next week. I think I could get you some pretty good info for getting started.

 

Mike

[mkd]

wish makers would always put the control on THAT side of the door

SWEET machine!!!!!!!!111

[neurosis]

Nice machine!  I'm jealous. 

I think that your only regret will be not getting a larger tool capacity.  We bought our Mori NH4000 with a 60 tool magazine and have kicked ourselves ever since. 

[Matt Berube at Ferron Mold]

22 hours ago, C^Millman said:

Will a Reverse direction Right Angle plate Work? I have used many Custom made Rihtangle plates over the years advantage is keeping the width of e part more centered to the pallet verse trying to stick on the outside of a tomb. I have even done double small columns shifted to the back of the tomb to keep the larger parts centered. Really come down to how much you can swing when doing a pallet change. In some places I have seen thes plate loaded into the machine and the part that wouldn't go through the pallet change, but would run on the machine. Kind of defeats the purpose of a pallet changer, but you do heat you need to get the job done. Many different options just comes down to what you want and how you want to go about it.

Mastercam machine sim tied to a post will do a good job for what you need, but if you want to step up to full verification then there are several CAV options to choose from. 

Something like that may work.  Our first tombstone is pictured below.  I am hopeful that since it's only 8" thick, we won't be too far off center.  I am picturing the addition of some heavy rails doweled and screwed to the sides of the tomb and then a 1" thick aluminum subplate over the tomb and rails with the workpiece screwed to that.  That puts the work surface about 6 inches from the center line.  How much do I have to worry about things being balanced over the center line of the pallet on this machine?

 

[Matt Berube at Ferron Mold]

16 hours ago, mkd said:

wish makers would always put the control on THAT side of the door

SWEET machine!!!!!!!!111

For real!  We looked at a Hyundai Wia that I immediately shot down for that reason.  My thought was that getting used to the horizontal layout would be hard enough without looking at it from the "wrong" side.

[Matt Berube at Ferron Mold]

32 minutes ago, Neurosis said:

Nice machine!  I'm jealous. 

I think that your only regret will be not getting a larger tool capacity.  We bought our Mori NH4000 with a 60 tool magazine and have kicked ourselves ever since. 

It's possible but our next largest tool changer is a 40 tool and the machine this Makino replaces had a 24 tool magazine so for us it feels pretty spacious at the moment.

 

Thanks for all the compliments, y'all.  Definitely feeling pretty lucky to have a machine of this caliber.   Makino has too much inventory on the A51 and A61 so the prices are reeealy competitive right now.

[BenK]

On 11/18/2017 at 7:55 PM, mkd said:

wish makers would always put the control on THAT side of the door

SWEET machine!!!!!!!!111

It's great if your not right handed. It drives me nuts being on that side of the door.

 

None the less, you have yourself a great machine. 

[huskermcdoogle]

17 hours ago, BenK said:

It's great if your not right handed. It drives me nuts being on that side of the door.

+1 million

But alas it just takes time in front of the machine to get used to it.  We are all creatures of habit.  I have almost always been a cycle start feed hold with the left and knobs with the right.  But I have been in situations where that wasn't the case, it doesn't take long to flip flop hand responsibilities.  What I find more annoying is when the control swings around on a boom and isn't attached solid to anything.  You are constantly chasing the damn thing around.

Congrats on the new machine Matt.  I am super jealous.  I haven't hardly touched a horizontal in 5 years.  I miss the flexibility and capability that they provide in a production environment.

[mkd]

On 11/19/2017 at 4:59 PM, BenK said:

It's great if your not right handed. It drives me nuts being on that side of the door.

 

None the less, you have yourself a great machine. 

Righty with control-scoliosis says different! Machinist medical degree i have!

 I still like facing the same way as the spindle. cal me crazy

[crazy^millman]

I am left handed so for this machine I will feel at home. On other machines made for right handed people it seems natural, but for left handed people like myself this setup suits me. 

[Sticky]

On page 3 of this thread I posted some pictures of a couple angle plates I made for holding mold bases and inserts. You are going to want the face behind the center of rotation for fitting larger bases on.

 

[Matt Berube at Ferron Mold]

21 hours ago, Sticky said:

On page 3 of this thread I posted some pictures of a couple angle plates I made for holding mold bases and inserts. You are going to want the face behind the center of rotation for fitting larger bases on.

 

Very nice fixturing equipment, Sticky!  Thanks for sharing.

[Sticky]

A cool thing worth mentioning with FCS is that you can buy their vises and clamping system with adjustable elements to that allow you to really square in you paart to your spindle. I know most people don't do this, but if you need to hold tenths on your parts FCS is the only system that will allow you to pull this off.

 

[Matt Berube at Ferron Mold]

I contacted FCS for some more information 

[nickbe10]

Strategy wise, if you have vertical 4 axis machines in your shop I would consider sticking with TOP/TOP when you define your HMC setup in MC rather than TOP/FRONT. Using TOP/TOP for both makes it much easier to move parts/programs from one machine type to the other.

[crazy^millman]

1 hour ago, Sticky said:

A cool thing worth mentioning with FCS is that you can buy their vises and clamping system with adjustable elements to that allow you to really square in you paart to your spindle. I know most people don't do this, but if you need to hold tenths on your parts FCS is the only system that will allow you to pull this off.

 

Nice looking work sir.

[Sticky]

31 minutes ago, nickbe10 said:

Strategy wise, if you have vertical 4 axis machines in your shop I would consider sticking with TOP/TOP when you define your HMC setup in MC rather than TOP/FRONT. Using TOP/TOP for both makes it much easier to move parts/programs from one machine type to the other.

I would consider how much you would actually swap parts from the HMC to a VMC. Anything well setup and optimized for a HMC is not going to transfer to a VMC without a lot of rework anyways, so I wouldn't consider this any sort of advantage.

Thanks for the compliments Millman.

[nickbe10]

3 hours ago, Sticky said:

Anything well setup and optimized for a HMC is not going to transfer to a VMC without a lot of rework anyways, so I wouldn't consider this any sort of advantage.

Actually in a job shop situation, and I don't know what we are talking about here, that's why I said "consider" , it can be a huge advantage. In the last HMC and VMC shop I worked we could have a 100+ operation program transferred from one machine type to the other in about 2 hrs. The post took care of the details....bailed ourselves out several times on passed due parts......just saying.

Of course some parts just won't fit both but it definitely adds flexibility when they do.

[Sticky]

What I mean is that if you truly setup an operation on a HMC, you are likely going to have to change almost all of your speeds and feeds and untold other data specific to the parts and fixturing.

This isn't so practical in mold work anyways as most mold machining on HMC's involves bigger parts that can't be swung in a 4th axis VMC, along with tooling that is too long to work in a 4th axis VMC.

 

[Matt Berube at Ferron Mold]

While awaiting the creation of our Makino post, I've started playing around with Mastercam's 4 - Axis HMC to get a feel for programming a horizontal.

I've made a quick file to get my bearings and after lots of youtube help, I have the B axis posting out values that make sense after setting the WCS to "TOP" and the toolplane to planes I defined for my rotations - B0, B45, & B-45.

I was surprised to see G54, G55, and G56 being used as I expected to need only G54.  This seems to be happening because the Toolplane Work Offset is set to "automatic" which I am not sure is desireable behavior or not...

If anyone has some example files or any tutorials on how to program a horizontal properly, I'd love to see them.   Go ahead, show off a bit and impress me with all of your mad skills!

If anyone wants to check out my *.Z2G file and provide some feedback, I'd be very grateful.

Curious how you folks are setting your "linking parameters" page.  I have always had Z0 at the top of the part in 3X VMCs but now, it seems that with Z0 being the center of the Tombstone, things are going to look a lot different.  It seems that using incremental values in linking parameters makes the numbers a lot easier to look at.

NC Code and .Z2G attached below:

 

%
O0001(4 AXIS HMC TEST)
(DATE=DD-MM-YY - 30-11-17 TIME=HH:MM - 11:41)
(MCX FILE - S:\MCX\MAKINO\4 AXIS HMC TEST.MCAM)
(NC FILE - C:\USERS\MATT\DOCUMENTS\MY MCAM2017\MILL\NC\4 AXIS HMC TEST.NC)
(MATERIAL - ALUMINUM INCH - 2024)
( T15 |  1/2 FLAT ENDMILL | H15 | D15 | WEAR COMP | TOOL DIA. - .5 )
( T16 | 2"  FACE MILL | H16 )
( T14 | 6 CENTER DRILL | H14 )
( T17 | 27/64 DRILL | H17 )
( T18 | 1/2-13 TAPRH | H18 )
( T19 | 3/16 FLAT ENDMILL | H19 )
N100 G20
N102 G0 G17 G40 G49 G80 G90
N104 T15 M6
N106 G0 G90 G54 X.375 Y-1.3 B0. S1069 M3
N108 G43 H15 Z8.937
N110 Z7.037
N112 G1 Z6.687 F6.42
N114 G41 D15 Y-1.
N116 Y1.
N118 G40 Y1.3
N120 Z7.037
N122 G0 Z8.937
N124 X-.375
N126 Z7.037
N128 G1 Z6.687
N130 G41 D15 Y1.
N132 Y-1.
N134 G40 Y-1.3
N136 Z7.037
N138 G0 Z8.937
N140 M5
N142 G91 G28 Z0.
N144 B0.
N146 M01
N148 T16 M6
N150 G0 G90 G55 X-3.491 Y-3.2 B-45. S1069 M3
N152 G43 H16 Z8.3
N154 Z6.4
N156 G1 Z6.2018 F1.07
N158 Y3.2
N160 G0 Z6.3018
N162 Y-3.2
N164 G1 Z6.1035
N166 Y3.2
N168 G0 Z6.2035
N170 Y-3.2
N172 G1 Z6.0053
N174 Y3.2
N176 G0 Z6.1053
N178 Y-3.2
N180 G1 Z5.907
N182 Y3.2
N184 G0 Z6.007
N186 Y-3.2
N188 G1 Z5.8088
N190 Y3.2
N192 G0 Z5.9088
N194 Y-3.2
N196 G1 Z5.7106
N198 Y3.2
N200 G0 Z5.8106
N202 Y-3.2
N204 G1 Z5.6123
N206 Y3.2
N208 G0 Z7.6123
N210 G56 X3.491 Y-3.2 Z8.3 B45.
N212 Z6.4
N214 G1 Z6.2018
N216 Y3.2
N218 G0 Z6.3018
N220 Y-3.2
N222 G1 Z6.1035
N224 Y3.2
N226 G0 Z6.2035
N228 Y-3.2
N230 G1 Z6.0053
N232 Y3.2
N234 G0 Z6.1053
N236 Y-3.2
N238 G1 Z5.907
N240 Y3.2
N242 G0 Z6.007
N244 Y-3.2
N246 G1 Z5.8088
N248 Y3.2
N250 G0 Z5.9088
N252 Y-3.2
N254 G1 Z5.7106
N256 Y3.2
N258 G0 Z5.8106
N260 Y-3.2
N262 G1 Z5.6123
N264 Y3.2
N266 G0 Z7.6123
N268 M5
N270 G91 G28 Z0.
N272 B0.
N274 M01
N276 T14 M6
N278 G0 G90 G55 X-3.491 Y.4 B-45. S1000 M3
N280 G43 H14 Z7.6123
N282 G98 G81 Z5.1623 R5.7123 F5.
N284 Y-.4
N286 G80
N288 M5
N290 G91 G28 Z0.
N292 B0.
N294 M01
N296 T17 M6
N298 G0 G90 G55 X-3.491 Y.4 B-45. S633 M3
N300 G43 H17 Z7.6123
N302 G98 G83 Z4.3856 R5.7123 Q.1266 F4.26
N304 Y-.4
N306 G80
N308 M5
N310 G91 G28 Z0.
N312 B0.
N314 M01
N316 T18 M6
N318 G0 G90 G55 X-3.491 Y.4 B-45. S534 M3
N320 G43 H18 Z7.6123
N322 G94
N324 G98 G84 Z4.6123 R5.7123 F41.0769
N326 Y-.4
N328 G80
N330 G94
N332 M5
N334 G91 G28 Z0.
N336 B0.
N338 M01
N340 T19 M6
N342 G0 G90 X3.4158 Y.4744 B45. S2852 M3
N344 G43 H19 Z7.6123
N346 Z5.7123
N348 G1 Z5.6223 F6.16
N350 X3.3095 Z5.6205
N352 Y-.4744 Z5.6039
N354 X3.6725 Z5.5976
N356 Y.4744 Z5.581
N358 X3.3095 Z5.5747
N360 Y-.4744 Z5.5581
N362 X3.6725 Z5.5518
N364 Y.4744 Z5.5352
N366 X3.3095 Z5.5289
N368 Y-.4744 Z5.5123
N370 X3.2995 Y-.4843
N372 X3.6825
N374 Y-.3962
N376 X3.2995
N378 Y-.3082
N380 X3.6825
N382 Y-.2201
N384 X3.2995
N386 Y-.1321
N388 X3.6825
N390 Y-.044
N392 X3.2995
N394 Y.044
N396 X3.6825
N398 Y.1321
N400 X3.2995
N402 Y.2201
N404 X3.6825
N406 Y.3082
N408 X3.2995
N410 Y.3962
N412 X3.6825
N414 Y.4843
N416 X3.2995
N418 Z5.6123
N420 G0 Z5.7123
N422 X3.3972 Y-.4075
N424 G1 Z5.5123
N426 G41 D19 Y-.4375
N428 G3 X3.491 Y-.5313 I.0938 J0.
N430 G1 X3.7231
N432 G3 X3.7293 Y-.525 I0. J.0063
N434 G1 Y.525
N436 G3 X3.7231 Y.5313 I-.0062 J0.
N438 G1 X3.2589
N440 G3 X3.2526 Y.525 I0. J-.0063
N442 G1 Y-.525
N444 G3 X3.2589 Y-.5313 I.0063 J0.
N446 G1 X3.491
N448 G3 X3.5847 Y-.4375 I0. J.0938
N450 G1 G40 Y-.4075
N452 Z5.6123
N454 G0 Z7.6123
N456 M5
N458 G91 G28 Z0.
N460 G28 X0. Y0. B0.
N462 M30
%

 

4 AXIS HMC TEST.ZIP