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All,

I am in need of some advice, we have an Okuma multus u3000 and we have been looking for a programmer or at least a set-up machinist with more knowledge of the machine. We have been unable to locate someone. What I would like to know is what is the best way to get someone up to speed quickly in programming and set-up. We have been working with our reseller and the main Okuma office and even they are struggling with some 5  axis toolpath/code. 

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1 hour ago, specv said:

All,

I am in need of some advice, we have an Okuma multus u3000 and we have been looking for a programmer or at least a set-up machinist with more knowledge of the machine. We have been unable to locate someone. What I would like to know is what is the best way to get someone up to speed quickly in programming and set-up. We have been working with our reseller and the main Okuma office and even they are struggling with some 5  axis toolpath/code. 

I would get in touch with Postability and look into their post for this machine.

We purchased an Okuma VTM-1200 several years ago and it's been a long road, but

thanks to Dave and his crew we now have a  post that outputs 99% edit free code.

A solid post helps with the training of personnel as well.

In the early days we never knew if a problem was due to bad code or us doing something wrong

on the machine.

Knowing the code is correct greatly reduces the effort required to troubleshoot and solve problems.

I believe Mastercam has an M/T machine and post for the Multus line, but have no experience with it.

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43 minutes ago, gcode said:

I would get in touch with Postability and look into their post for this machine.

We purchased an Okuma VTM-1200 several years ago and it's been a long road, but

thanks to Dave and his crew we now have a  post that outputs 99% edit free code.

A solid post helps with the training of personnel as well.

In the early days we never knew if a problem was due to bad code or us doing something wrong

on the machine.

Knowing the code is correct greatly reduces the effort required to troubleshoot and solve problems.

I believe Mastercam has an M/T machine and post for the Multus line, but have no experience with it.

Except for we are using Topsolid, The CAM programming side is not really the issue, I can teach that, its knowing the capabilities/codes of the machine itself, and even the type of machine(multi-tasking 5 axis)

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1 hour ago, specv said:

We have been working with our reseller and the main Okuma office and even they are struggling with some 5  axis toolpath/code. 

These are really the most complicated machines to get going well. There is just so much going on from an operation and programming (including posting) point of view.

We are really in the same place with these machines we were in back in the early 90s with multiaxis mills, all these new toys, now what...not too many people out there with a real handle on it.

And as with everything machining there just is no substitute for experience. We have the same problem here (Doosan MT). We have nobody with hands on operations experience coupled with the kind of fundamental understanding of the system as a whole. As a result it has never been run close to optimally. This was all history by the time I got here. The machine had been hard crashed multiple times, god only knows what was done with the parameters.

We don't even have ANY parts which require the B axis head (I think they got it because it was "sexy"). I have advised to sell the MT and the TT (similar state of play) and once we regroup get a couple of Twin Turrets and get Mastercam and the Machine Supplier right from the get go to get MT worked up, BEFORE we make our first part.

44 minutes ago, gcode said:

In the early days we never knew if a problem was due to bad code or us doing something wrong

on the machine.

Which of course leaves us with the problem of finding a good machinist to run the thing. I can read Mill code and converse passably with a single turret machine, but I just don't have enough 2 turret live tooling experience to handle the operations side of these more complicated machines and codes.

If you don't want to open the MT (MP.NET)  can of worms and stick with MP then, speaking from experience, Postability will give you the best 3rd party support I am aware of, for sure.

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12 minutes ago, specv said:

Except for we are using Topsolid,

That's quite the bite of the apple you have taken . 

A relatively new programming system with not much experience out there, and a machine to match.

People talk a lot about programming systems and what's "better" or "worse" but for all it's foibles Mastercam has huge market penetration which means there is relatively more experience out there wit the system, compared to virtually all the others. Which is why you are here, right?

Unigraphics support around here is poor compared to Mastercam so shops that run it have a tough row to hoe trying to find programmers that can even get clean 4 axis mill code to the machines, let alone something really complicated. And I am pretty confident there are more shops in the area running UG than Topsolid, don't worry I know enough about Topsolid to be very interested in it. 

If I had my druthers I would program in NCL, but I would never in a million years advise any shop I know of to even consider it as a programming system, despite its power.

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Gcode hit the nail on the head, we need someone with the machine experience so that we know the the machine is doing what its supposed to do. That makes the post editing easier (the post is near post and go already)

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1 hour ago, gcode said:

In the early days we never knew if a problem was due to bad code or us doing something wrong

on the machine.

Knowing the code is correct greatly reduces the effort required to troubleshoot and solve problems.

A lot of my time these days is developing 'turnkey' part programs, and many times it is for a customer that has just bought a new machine with advanced capabilities and doesn't have anyone in house that knows how to run the machine and even set offsets, etc.

Starting with a good post is very helpful, but if the parameters in the machine are set differently from the parameters that worked for a 'proven' post, you might not get the desired motion.  

 

Working with posts from Mr. Postability (Dave Thompson) and posts from the crew at In House Solutions have been positive experiences.    But if you can't tell them why a snippet of code doesn't work, they can't fix it.  I end up burning a lot of time going back and forth between an Application Engineer from the machine tool manufacturer and the post developers.  

 

Okay,  I'm done whining.  

I love my job.  I really do.  The mental stimulation is what keeps me going.

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18 minutes ago, gcode said:

With many on these new machines, the technology is so new that even the dealers don't have

anyone of staff who is familiar with it.

 

The other issue a lot of times is that unless the dealer gets one on their floor for a while or the AE's get to do a big turnkey, they often have very little time on the machines. You sell machine, install, train for a few days to week, then move on to the next project. 

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13 minutes ago, YoDoug® said:

The other issue a lot of times is that unless the dealer gets one on their floor for a while or the AE's get to do a big turnkey, they often have very little time on the machines. You sell machine, install, train for a few days to week, then move on to the next project. 

Or the AE leaves the dealer and you have to hunt them down , right Doug 🤣 By the way you have been a huuuuge help to us on this machine.

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3 minutes ago, specv said:

Or the AE leaves the dealer and you have to hunt them down , right Doug 🤣 By the way you have been a huuuuge help to us on this machine.

Door to door from my house to your plant is about 20 minutes and it's a nice easy drive. I wish I had some free time to help you guys out but I have two robot cells to finish building this summer. In the fall I may have more time if you still need the help. 

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1 hour ago, Newbeeee™ said:

As you're post and go, it really sounds like you *just* need operator training.

Surely Okuma has *someone* at their office who can fly out and educate you and your guys?

For a big fee of course...

 

We don't have a problem paying for it. We worked with one of the top AE's for Okuma and he helped a little. I do think it way above normal operator training though. That's why I'm asking what everyone does when they need higher level training. We have been told by many machine builders that we do things that most shops can't or never need to do.

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Well I don't consider myself high level training, but these machines are not really that hard to figure out with the right experience. You need to get someone in with the right experience to really help develop the process. Once you have the process developed then it is just plug and play from that point for like parts. When the process needs to change thinking outside of the box and developing the process is the work. Mill or Turning what is better for removing Material? 95% of the time on these machines I am milling off stock verse turning off stock. Take an experience Lathe person and show them this and they normally have a melt down. We took one project years ago that was over 100 hours on 11 machines with an outside process of gig grinding and reduced it down to 10 hours with burnishing on a Multus U 4000. One Roughing Turning operation took over 2 hours and with a 5 flute endmill we roughed the same area in 1 minute. Different part instead of using a 2" inserted Drill and a boring bar to rough an ID I took a 2" High Shear cutter and Spun the C axis while ramping down the bore in 4 minutes roughed what would have take 30 minutes to do with turning. I do the same thing on VTL's with C Axis abilities. Anytime you can spread the wear over many milling inserts or a Solid Carbide Endmill verses one turning insert you always going to win.

Check out the MT environment Chris Kozell and the CNC Software Team have been working hard to get these working. Having a separate CAV is never a bad idea IMHO. Look to Hainbuch, Hamier, Schunk, and Royal for what are your work holding options. Look to the different tooling options out there to tool the machine up correctly.

Again high level training is really in the eye of the beholder and I just do what I can to help people use their equipment as efficiently and capable as humanly possible.

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1 hour ago, 5th Axis CGI said:

Well I don't consider myself high level training, but these machines are not really that hard to figure out with the right experience. You need to get someone in with the right experience to really help develop the process.

this is exactly what i am asking about, where or how does one get that experience? The whole concept is really new to us and we have a lathe guy on the machine with 25+ years of lathe experience working on it. but that higher level of "oh you can do this or that with this new machine" is what we need to find. Where do i get this "someone" we have had recruiters (at least 10) looking for us and the resume's are week at best.

 

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56 minutes ago, specv said:

this is exactly what i am asking about, where or how does one get that experience? The whole concept is really new to us and we have a lathe guy on the machine with 25+ years of lathe experience working on it. but that higher level of "oh you can do this or that with this new machine" is what we need to find. Where do i get this "someone" we have had recruiters (at least 10) looking for us and the resume's are week at best.

 

Good luck and keep looking. I have taught many over the years on these types of machines and one thing I hate to admit is people like Doug and others like him are hard to find. The good Advanced Manufacturing Specialist out there are busy or already have a job. Others have left the profession all together that did know.

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14 minutes ago, 5th Axis CGI said:

Good luck and keep looking. I have taught many over the years on these types of machines and one thing I hate to admit is people like Doug and others like him are hard to find. The good Advanced Manufacturing Specialist out there are busy or already have a job. Others have left the profession all together that did know.

you would love Minnesota Ron! Come on up!

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42 minutes ago, 5th Axis CGI said:

The good Advanced Manufacturing Specialist out there are busy or already have a job

That is the difficulty. They can be hard to find and you need to be able to entice them away from their current gig. Usually that means $$$. I loved my job at the distributor, but in the end I wanted 2 things to make a jump, the chance to build robot cells and more $$$. My current job hits both. 

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11 hours ago, specv said:

you would love Minnesota Ron! Come on up!

Just hire a guy like Ron (he has multiple Mill-Turn consultants) or Mick (Mike Neville), to come in for a week (or 2, spread out), and have him setup and train a turn-key project. Have him teach 2-3 guys at once to get the best value for dollar, and to make sure the knowledge isn't siloed (several people should all know how to run the machine).

I'd recommend talking about the type of parts you want to make, and the quantities per job. This will influence tooling and processes.

The biggest hurdle with these machines is understanding the processes you want to use, and how to setup and control the output of those processes using the "input" of your CAM software. 

Have you talked with Mick at all? I believe he programs this exact machine, using TopSolid and Vericut, so he would probably be a great resource. I'd suggest bringing him stateside for a week, or arranging some online training with him...

For roughing, most lathe guys will also tend to not utilize the max depth of cut for a given insert, nor make proper use of the available horsepower of the turning spindle. For these reasons, using a solid carbide endmill to rough is an easier process to optimize. Moreover, the chips generated when milling are of a much more consistent size and shape. This can help prevent chip wrap, and issues with rats nests of stringy chips blocking your chip conveyor. 

That said, you will have trouble matching the finish and cylindricity of a turning operation. 

Most of the difficulty in learning these machines lies in understanding how to string together multiple types of tools and operations, using the available machine modes and knowing which modes are cross-compatible, and which are mutually exclusive.

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*Cough*, Mike is everywhere LOL

I'm betting you're using a kinematic model that looks very similar to mine. I also have a beautifully dialled Vericut machine and control as well.

We'll touch base on the dark side 😂

By the way,  I have the utmost respect for some of the contributors in this thread, and Chris Kozell at CNC Software. I even had a couple of drinks with him when he was down here :)

 

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On 7/4/2019 at 2:06 AM, nickbe10 said:

That's quite the bite of the apple you have taken . 

A relatively new programming system with not much experience out there, and a machine to match.

People talk a lot about programming systems and what's "better" or "worse" but for all it's foibles Mastercam has huge market penetration which means there is relatively more experience out there wit the system, compared to virtually all the others. Which is why you are here, right?

Unigraphics support around here is poor compared to Mastercam so shops that run it have a tough row to hoe trying to find programmers that can even get clean 4 axis mill code to the machines, let alone something really complicated. And I am pretty confident there are more shops in the area running UG than Topsolid, don't worry I know enough about Topsolid to be very interested in it. 

If I had my druthers I would program in NCL, but I would never in a million years advise any shop I know of to even consider it as a programming system, despite its power.

It's not relatively new, its just new to a lot of people in these here parts :)

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1 hour ago, Mick said:

It's not relatively new, its just new to a lot of people in these here parts :)

I know, the question is what kind of user base and support is available. I guess not much as the Mastercam forum is being used.

It looks like very interesting software indeed, very intuitive for a good machinist and I have had great reports from accomplished programmers who have run it.

However as we all know that is not necessarily enough, good luck finding a good programmer if you need one, or start your own training college, or pay outrageous wages for not much execution. The UG programmers I mentioned above were making $45.00 / hr. and couldn't get clean code to 4 axis verticals, that's a pretty sad state of affairs

And yet as we know UG is excellent and highly regarded software.

 

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15 hours ago, nickbe10 said:

I know, the question is what kind of user base and support is available. I guess not much as the Mastercam forum is being used.

It looks like very interesting software indeed, very intuitive for a good machinist and I have had great reports from accomplished programmers who have run it.

However as we all know that is not necessarily enough, good luck finding a good programmer if you need one, or start your own training college, or pay outrageous wages for not much execution. The UG programmers I mentioned above were making $45.00 / hr. and couldn't get clean code to 4 axis verticals, that's a pretty sad state of affairs

And yet as we know UG is excellent and highly regarded software.

 

Heh, well, I get clean code to 2 - 5 axis and Mill-Turns, but yes, I agree with you. I spent a bunch of time with UG, and to be honest, I was underwhelmed with the post processing.

The lack of users comment, yes, is  a common response, and to a certain degree it is true. However, sometimes "I'll use that app because everyone else uses it" isn't the best reason.

 

Anyway,  I was just pointing out the "relatively new" thing. It is a common misconception. (Like "Mastercam is good at everything" 😀)

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