Advice needed on lathe training.

[patboyd69]

My company recently bought another company that has a Haas lathe ST 30SSY.  I have been given the job of programming for this machine as well as an additional 8 mills.  Lucky me!

I have the opportunity to go to a Haas class on this lathe and also have the ability to purchase Mastercam lathe. Just wondering what recommendations do any of you guys have. Both or just stick to programming with Mcam?

Most of our work is DOD, so not really a lot of quantity, anywhere from 2 to 100 parts.  I have strictly been a mill guy up until now. 

Thanks for any advice.

[Robert Ouellette]

I have used both and if your Haas lathe has the quick programing installed i would forgo the mastercam and program right on the lathe. It is much better than you would think. in 10 years i think i could not program 2 features on 2 different parts. It is very powerful. So i would take the Haas training. then try it out on the lathe for a few months. If after that you need mastercam, then buy it and get training on it aswell. 

[civiceg]

It's a Y axis lathe. Unless you are doing extremely simple work with live tooling, I would highly recommend getting Mcam lathe. The post is pretty solid that is included for free. As long as you are using 2017 and beyond. 

 

[crazy^millman]

3 hours ago, patboyd69 said:

My company recently bought another company that has a Haas lathe ST 30SSY.  I have been given the job of programming for this machine as well as an additional 8 mills.  Lucky me!

I have the opportunity to go to a Haas class on this lathe and also have the ability to purchase Mastercam lathe. Just wondering what recommendations do any of you guys have. Both or just stick to programming with Mcam?

Most of our work is DOD, so not really a lot of quantity, anywhere from 2 to 100 parts.  I have strictly been a mill guy up until now. 

Thanks for any advice.

Stick with a CAM program and let the machine run parts. If setup correctly in your Mastercam with libraries and such could spit out program in less than an hour with setup sheet tools list and in process sheets. With conversational you loose the paper trail and no way to go behind someone and see what they were thinking. What tool what holder and such, what models and other things the power of a CAM gives you. Most places are going to only sending models with conversational someone has to make a blueprint, but with a CAM program right to the model and done. Want disorganization and possible issues with tracking rev changes and making them real  and seeing the results before running part then use a CAM.

Yes I did conversational for many years when I started back in the late 80's early 90's I would never go back to that, not because I wasn't good or efficient at it. I would not for the very reasons I stated above.

[nickbe10]

Totally with Ron on this one.

I would add that the power now available in CAD/CAM systems the whole idea is to do a complete virtual machining process within the CAD/CAM environment. Then post clean 100% edit free code to the machine which, if set up properly, should give you 0% scrap.

Of course we live in the real world with human error so there is bound to be some scrap but the goal is 0%. We are just about there in our Mill dept.. I have been here nearly 4 years now and our 1st run scrap rate is less than .01% on our Mills. Never forget scrap costs 3x the cost of making a good part and 90% of scrap is from MDI (aka conversational) errors.

So QUALITY is also a major factor here.

Like you I have recently taken up the lathe side and that's where I am going next, to get the same on the lathes. Without the CAV available on the CAD/CAM system this would be much more difficult. 

Add that to all of Ron's good points and this is a no brainer really, especially on low volume jobs......just ask Ron with all the "little" one off / low volume parts he does.....

[patboyd69]

How about Millturn? 

Thanks for all the advice.

[crazy^millman]

1 hour ago, patboyd69 said:

How about Millturn? 

Thanks for all the advice.

Never in a million years would I not use CAM for this. Take all my thought above and multiply them by 100 for reasons to not do this conversationally. Not sure it that machine has made it to MT yet, but if it has then you have machine simulation in the process to help check for collisions and other things.

[nickbe10]

2 hours ago, patboyd69 said:

How about Millturn? 

I don't have a problem with single turret y axis lathes in "normal" MC, although it would be nice if they get the machine sim. going on these.

Once you get up to 2 turrets and / or the dreaded B axis head then I would  be (and am) looking at the Mill/turn module with the synch. manager.

[jlw™]

I use plane old lathe and vtl for table/head integrexes daily.  I will not go to MillTurn until I can build my own tools and chuck jaws.

[nickbe10]

30 minutes ago, jlw™ said:

I use plane old lathe and vtl for table/head integrexes daily.

Have some sympathy for us poor "square heads".........Mr. Roundy....!!

They say we will have access to Tools this year.....care to take bets....?

[jlw™]

I truly think the 3d lathe tools in 2019 is headed that way.  If they ever come out with mach sim for lathe I know I will not use M/T.  Not until we buy a twin spindle or twin turret machine.  May not then.

[nickbe10]

Have you had a demo of the Millturn?

I don't like loosing control either but that synch manager sure is slick, especially for those of us without much "hands on" lathe experience......

I ran a couple of lathes for about 18 months about 20 years ago (no live tooling or y axis), so my axis orientation is OK, but working through the synching in my head is just not there like I can do it with mills of all configurations......I don't even bother with machine sym. on VMC 4 axis (which is what I have at the moment in Mills), maybe on HMC (but I got away without it for years just using MC verify) and some sort of Gcode CAV on 5 axis.

[Matthew Hajicek - Singularity]

From what I've heard (someone correct me if I'm wrong) in Millturn if you have to change anything in your machine definition you have to nuke your programs and start over from scratch.

[Orvie]

That's not true.

In fact, I set up templates like you would in lathe and import new parts and stock models.

I also start with a clean slate and import operations.

You will have to redefine part, stock, main wcs, sub wcs, jaws, and pickoff, but after you've done it a few times it actually saves a lot of time.

 

Now, If you decide to change part hangout, jaws, or pickoff location in a file, you will have to adjust main and sub WCS, but that is fairly easy.

Once you reselect your modified WCS, the only operations you need to adjust are parametric options that don't use geometry like Facing.

 

I have used enough machine environments to also know that they don't all behave the same way.

Typically, I would choose "right face" for my main WCS, and "left face" for my sub WCS.

I have written hundreds of programs that this worked flawlessly on.

 

The most recent machine environment I am using always grabs my stock face for WCS for some reason.

This forces me to manually define my WCS. 

 

 

 

[Matthew Hajicek - Singularity]

What if you have to swap out machine definitions?

[Orvie]

You would need to start with a new file and import the geometry and operations.

Definitely not as easy as it currently is with lathe.

[Orvie]

2019 will make this possible directly from lathe.

[Matthew Hajicek - Singularity]

Sound like progress is being made.