Yeah, I'll be at IMTS Wednesday afternoon to Saturday.

Sweet what booth? Matsuura I'm assuming?

Well cincy... you're in the wrong part of the country to see people using MAMs to their potential. Come on out to the west coast. Large hydraulic manifolds all day every day.

Would love to see! You going to be at IMTS. Maybe we could chat then?

I would love to see larger parts being machined heavily and successfully on the mam. Might be an eye opener for me. Just going by what I've seen and where I feel the machine is normally applied.

Are you looking at the new px 30i foghorn? It is almost identical to the mam in work envelope. It's not the h 30i. The two are meant to compete with other.

System 3r has been making quick change work holding forever. Matrix 185 and pc210 from Erowa will be the standards in this size working envelope in my opinion. If you can wait the new makino da300 will be a real interesting platform. To be introduced at imts.

Interface on the yasda is system 3r matrix 185. Far more accurate than the capto on the matsuura. More robust in my opinion. Much larger clamping diameter. I'd trust using the whole working envelope on the yasda. Not the matsuura on the little c6 connection. I've seen a 11 inch long steel part be machined on the matsuura and it was slow and sketchy at best at the extents of its working diameter. Reason I've not looked seriously at it. We've talked about it.

Sorry v plus 550

Matsuura es 550v. Just got released and redesigned.

I recall seeing something similar to this with the pallets on Makino horizontals. Pallets used to be ground, now they are milled. There may be some truth in the explanation. 

Let me know if you need a hand with some higher end aerospace thin walled parts for that mx-520 programmed

I love that little machine, it's a lot more capable that most people would think  

 Thanks and will do. 

It definitely is a GREAT machine for entering in to the 5 axis world and very capable.

I think I've done right by the people that work WITH me. I've said it before and I'll always say it, no one works for me, there are only people that work WITH me. If there's an issue I always have an open door and am willing to discuss. 

We have some very nice equipment, in a nice location and some flexibility that many others simply do not have. People more often than not have the resources they need to make a project happen. Is it always perfect, no. We're learning as we go but certainly are not stagnant by any stretch of the imagination. It's a place I would want to come learn and grow my skill set. 

Definitely not looking to take advantage of anyone, couldn't sleep at night if I felt like I did. I want to and do offer a place to come, work, learn and grow. Without that happening a business is slowly dying.  

I don't see 90k-100k being unreasonable. Again it's the right person that sees an opportunity and will seize it.

Anything that's reasonable. Likely some sort of base whether it be hourly or salary and then a quarterly bonus based on some sort of metric. Profit, on time delivery, machine up time, internal project completion, quality. All metrics to be considered. In the end it's les about the money and more about the right person. Looking for someone to be as close to a partner in the business without owning a percentage.

Thanks for the support and words of wisdom. We're doing our best to build a first class organization. It's hard but certainly worth it in my book.

On the lookout... 

Thanks.

I am looking for a top level programmer and manufacturing person to help take my business to the next level. We have extremely nice equipment and software with more on the way. Currently have a Matsuura 5 axis, 3 VMCs and 2-2 axis lathes and a HMC coming in about 3 weeks along with a Zeiss CMM. We are a small company, 6 currently, and looking to grow at a steady clip with the right people, equipment and processes. Implementing Vericut for the MX-520 and HMC is on the short list of projects along with ISO certification. We've latched on to a very nice project and have a few more in the works. 

How do I go about finding this person? We're in the Greater Cincinnati area. If you know anyone who may have interest please send them my way. 

Are recruiters of any use in this particular type of search? Any suggestions would be great. 

Thanks.

Troy K

We're looking at the Mill-turn add on for a potential machine purchase. DMG Mori NTX1000SZM. What are your likes and dislikes about this product compared to other software and products from CNC software? 

What we're looking to potentially do is replace a 2 axis turning center and VMC with this for doing SMALL (1-50) lot volume parts of moderate complexity. We must be able to have the same amount of programming time or less than what it takes now to produce the desired program. Works fairly seemlessly now as the current machines are relatively simple. My worries come with the added complexity of the machine for our particular use.

What do you say? 

Stick with Lyndex and don't look back for collets. 

Has anyone here worked with RobotWorx out of Marion, Ohio? 

Just a little FYI...all CNC people are nuts.

 

So on to the Robot stuff.  In my little world here, I cant believe we didn't get robots sooner!  We had 2 installed 2 years ago & now I'm debugging our 4th Fanuc and  about to have our 5th installed (end of March).  That doesn't count the Automated servo type systems we've also installed.

 

Keep in mind the cost of the Robot is probably less than 1/2 of your total install cost. The biggest % could easily be EOAT.  Unless you have in house robotic programmers/integraters I'd go with a hired service. There has to be someone close to you...Mason Oh is one of Fanuc's facilities. 

Who did you use for the first two installs?

Thanks all! 

A couple items- End of arm tooling will be DEAD simple. Its a fork that slides into two grooves on the pallet, similar to an Erowa Robot Easy for PC210. We are using a standardized pallet, that we are making, so the robot will literally be doing the same thing all the time. The pallet will have two Schunk retention knobs on it and will mate with a Schunk NSE plus 100-75 clamping unit. We have a prototype chuck made right now. Wish I could post a pic but haven't figured out how. You can see it on my Instagram page. https://www.instagram.com/tkmsusa/  

The communications with the machine is where I think I may struggle. It seems pretty simple in theory. Machine tells robot it's ready to open door and unclamps pallet, robot opens door, grabs pallet, lifts and retracts, puts pallet back in proper storage area, grabs new pallet, places it in machine and tells machine to clamp pallet and robot closes door. There is an extra port on the Schunk zero point that they call "monitoring". if you put air to the port and it reads 1 bar the chuck is closed, if it reads 2 bar the chuck is closed. I can get pallet clamp confirmation this way. 

I have spoken with a few integrators. I have found one that I really would like to work with but can't seem to get pricing from on what I'm looking to do. I want to be involved with the integrator to learn as much as possible and do things like building the racking and EOAT, maybe this is a turn off to them. There is another local integrator that sells used robots as well as does new integration that may be a good fit to just help in the areas that we need it. They seemed very willing to setup a used machine on their floor and teach us how to use it. 

I know with the used market you have to be worried about software when needing support directly from Fanuc. I need to have a few more discussions with the used place to see how all that works.  

I'm thinking more and more about doing this myself. Am I nuts for going this route? It's something I've always been fascinated with and would love to learn. 

Hi All,

I have a few machining centers that I would like to potentially tend with a robot. They are currently under utilized but some of our work lends itself to running a first article during the day and then feeding the machine at night via a standardized pallet. As I begin to adventure towards integrating something what are some of the major do's and don'ts of the road.

Is this something that I could potentially do myself with a used robot, looking at something like the Fanuc R2000 series. I am fairly versed in mechanical design and some programming language, but not much. I lack significantly on the electrical side of things. Are there resources or people out there that may be willing to be a go to with questions? All my machines are Fanuc controlled, so I'm hoping that helps.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks,

Troy k

Figured it out. It looks like it is mislabeled as OVERALL-LENGTH. It grabs the data from the Tool Projection.

Does anyone know if there is a XML tag for "Tool Projection" hiding somewhere? 

We are trying to modify the active reports simple tool list to show the tool stick out from the holder.

Is there a way to make a XML tag if there isn't one available?