3 machine cell, Toyoda FA400's, 1999-2000, 24 pallets, 14K, 1Deg

I seen an article somewhere of a shop that buys castings and makes new machines from them. I believe in the Portland area.

I'm looking for option to offload our old 3 machine HMC cell. Does anyone know a good machine recycler that buy machines to tear down and sell for parts? Thanks, -Josh

I have CFM meters in the header that tell me line loss. I'll post pics later.

Here's what I settled on. Works perfectly and no moving parts.... .032"x2" Spring tempered steel. Haven't hooked up electrical and hoses are zip tied right now. Will finish soon.

I bought the vac-u-lok coolant recirculation system for that

I already have the switches in place. it's all good. Switch closes at 23" and opens when it falls to 20". Only tripping to ground so I can activate a relay sending 24v signal to the control.

Well maybe 5,000cfm would help

I made the vaculock.com mistake also

It doesn't matter how much cfm you have if 29inHg won't hold the part down then 5,000CFM at 29inHG isn't gonna help. The leak occurred at 29" so more volume at 29" means nothing. My point is if the line before flows 4cfm but you have a restriction down to say 1cfm in the rotary union them the part could be gone and the line would still read full vacuum up stream. I've seen this happen over and over and hence the reason for a separate isolated port on the face of the fixture for monitoring vacuum. This line goes to the switch and vac gauge. The cfm Meter is in the line before the pallet and tells me the total leak down.

I think the key here is the rotary union has a smaller office and therefore creates a restriction.

OK. Let's say your line flows 4cfm. That line feeds four faces. One face is leaking 1cfm and let's say that draws that vacuum down to 15inH on that one face. Your gauge will still read full vacuum because it can flow more then the leakage and therefore maintain the vacuum. Not at that one face that just hucked a part though... I've seen this happen all the time on our old design.

I also have a cfm meter for both pallets. You may have vacuum at the face but your at the limits of what the pump can flow to overcome the leakage.... This is the first project where I've done everything from machine purchase to fixture design and built/installed all systems. I'm pretty happy with it

Here's the workholding. All built from scratch. 4 parts at once. https://youtu.be/aPXEhvu8LfQ

And its built for future robot loading with a feedback loop to tell the robot the part has vacuum.

Not true. A 1/4" line can flow 7cfm. Same as my pump. I'm sensing vacuum directly at the part face independent of the vacuum line. Spinning a 6.5" face mill you wanna shut it down asap if you lose vacuum

Air pneumatic clamps, vacuum holding and vacuum switches to sense vacuum loss while machining.

Would love to see pics of a double hinge. Seems like it would slap upon zero return?

Yes we need to be able to zero return the b axis. We've used coils before but with two lines and a 6 wire cable spanning 35" of z travel gets problematic

Gents, I'm wondering if anyone has a genius idea for how to get hoses to a rotary union on top of a tombstone? I need to get air, vacuum and power to a tombstone in our HX500G and with 35" of z travel an articulating arm is not gonna work. Here's the union I'm using http://www.scottrotaryseals.com/products/rotary-unions/ul/ I'm planning on using 0.040"x2" spring steel and letting it stretch when extended and loop when home. I'll run the stuff along the bottom. It will work but I'm open to better ideas! Thanks, Josh-

I believe so. Just says embedded. Looks like XP. I downloaded it. Thanks for the help. Wish they stuck with Fanuc...

It works though Kitamura has their own frontend on top of the Mits control.

I got it working. Not sure what the problem was. Memory program "SUB JUMP.NC" % O0001(COUPON MASTER PROGRAM) M98 P1000,D0 M30 % Dataserv program named "1000" % O1000 N10 #600 = 6666 M99 %

That's the doc that Kitamura sent me. I'll try both ways.