If you're not going to use any G54.2, G54.4, or G68.5 (which it sounds like you definitely aren't), you need to place the part in Mastercam exactly where it is in the machine. Use the machine's actual X/Z center of rotation as the WCS origin in Mastercam. Then your numbers will come out correctly.

Do you know the X/Z center of rotation numbers?

Thanks for the link Joe - I just read it. I knew Haas was in the big house, but didn't know why.

It's amazing how they thought they could even get away with it?

He's been out for awhile now. They actually did get away with it until one guy left the company and ratted them out. I'm not sure how they actually transferred the money back to Gene's personal bank accounts, as surely that would have been tricky. But the first part of the scam went off without a hitch.

LOL. Chuck Todd is the dude who sold imaginary machines to Haas Automation to the tune of 60 million dollars or so, kept two percent for his work, and then kicked the rest back to Gene Haas personally.

http://www.vcstar.com/news/2007/nov/03/one-man-led-haas-case/

There are lots of ways to do it, but one something simple like this, I like to just do exactly what I know will work:

Peel mill path right down the middle to clear out a nice deep channel. Then:

Use Edit>Trim/Break>Break circles, to break the arcs at the ends of your parts into little .050 or so segments.

Draw a line from the endpoint of one of those little segments, to the matching endpoint of the segment on the other end of the part (straight line, parallel with the direction of your groove)

Switch to the right side view, and Xform>Rotate>Copy that line around the floor of your groove so it draws a bunch of lines about .050 apart from each other.

Now you just do a 2D contour path. Select the lines in order from bottom to top. Set the depth to incremental, and you have a nice optirough type path that will preserve your endmill corners.

There are surely more elegant ways of doing it, but it all depends on if you want to take the time to tinker around, or just get it done.

(Edit: Just saw that you said the radius is only 11/16. I was thinking it was a lot bigger.)

We are building common grid plates on our Haas's (VF2, VF3, VF3YT, VF6)

Our own design similar to Stevens plates.

We want a central "zero" dial hole that will be the same on every machine.

Can a Haas be grid shifted to that zero?

Not sure what would be the best route.

We want to program to local part zero in Mastercam with G10's in the header of the program that shift from "zero" of subplate to part zero.

Also want to allow machinist to shift x or y in small incremental amounts without overwriting G10's.. does this make sense??

Can a Haas be grid shifted like a Fanuc? (internal parameters??)

Kevin, one way to accomplish this:

Create a program number O9555(or whatever) on all the Haases, that G10s the center location of your sub plate (the numbers will be different on every machine, of course, but the program number is the same). Then you just have the post call that sub program, and then G10 shift each offset incrementally.

So your post would spit out:

M98P9555 (PLATE ORIGIN LOAD)

G91G10L2P1X-15.Y3.Z6.25

G91G20L2P2X-8.5Y3.Z6.25

etc

etc

Then you can post and go for any machine.

This is the way we do it on horizontals.

Chipman, if possible, can you do semifinishing at 12,000rpm for awhile before the final finishing? I have a few different buddies with SS and VM machines with that 12k spindle. They seem pretty happy as long as you keep it cooking at high RPM so it's not growing and shrinking.

I really like those two post style tombstones! Do you have any more pictures of those?

Very creative.

Dave, how did your home made aluminum tombstones turn out?

Zack, you're seriously slacking on getting us videos of that Variaxis.

This is not entirely accurate if you allow me to say. B-Axis turning is ALWAYS done in the same way on the CAM system, where the only variance you have is the tool control point. The rest is done by the CNC itself.

 

So in the CAM side, the programming approach and output is pretty much the same in all systems, and it would cover 100% of the millturns supporting B-Axis turning.

 

In regards codes, specific NCI codes triggering the event could handle it well, or PPWords could deal with specifics without too much harm for the user.

 

In the end of this article you can see a bit of how it works as code:

 

http://camzone.org/2...me-possibility/

Yeah I should have been more clear. I didn't mean specifically B axis turning operations - just B axis multi-tasking machines in general - and their limitless variations and differences between manufacturers.

It's easy to look at the mill-turn market segment and say, "WTF were these guys thinking? How could they not see this coming?" But my guess is that it was a more calculated move, that simply ended up biting a little worse than they expected.

The B axis machine class comes with a virtually infinite number of machine configurations, builder specific codes, builder specific capabilities, etc. I don't really blame them for chasing the low hanging fruit.

That's a sweetheart. Can the MT product do B-Axis turning? Or are you going with NX or Esprit?

 

-Josh

Del is the wire guy. So his only involvement will be the occasional venture out of his little air conditioned fish bowl.

Cincy, how much did that Zoller set you back?

I do, but probably not enough. We are a small shop and I work very efficiently and I charge according to how long it will take me to get things up and running. I had an employee that was a decent programmer and I generally worked at 2X the productivity on design, setup, and programming. I should probably bill NRE according to my employees productivity.

 

 

 

I bought a pair of the Schunk clamps for the Koma rotary I just purchased for the PS95. I am in the process of building a tombstone for it and the plan is to build duplicate fixtures for high volume jobs and with the clamps, part change-over will be a few seconds per cycle instead of 90-120 seconds. It should be able to get in the ballpark of the A51 on production efficiency with that setup. Both machines are back to back in the shop so one operator can keep both running very efficiently. Once everything is in place and functioning it will be a badass setup.

 

The clamps are controlled electrically with pneumatic switches which paves the way for a future robot between the machines. That is my main reasoning for wanting Schunk clamps on the A51 as well. It allows for another 8-16 hours per day of capacity with super flexibility since the robot can control those clamps directly and it is a standard interface. Setting up a job for it will be very easy.

Yeah a vertical with no pallet changer is definitely a place where a good zero point system is worth the money. Check out this nifty setup:

http://www.practicalmachinist.com/vb/cnc-machining/vmc-quick-change-pallets-some-ideas-you-guys-expand-upon-276939/

That's kinda the price range I would expect. They must have some very well paid service engineers to install and dial in those machines. There's some SERIOUS complexity behind that sheet metal with all those tool, boring bar, and facing head changers.

BTW, I just found myself hovering my mouse over the icons on your screen capture waiting for the descriptions to pop up.

Daniel, roughly what does a WFL like that cost? (Decked out with everything like that video)

They are out there no doubt but they are in secure jobs doing this for someone else...

My experience is that they are out there - already making more money than I am.

What about finding somebody who's only got experience with 3 axis VMC type stuff - and then just handing off all of your PS-95 and Haas work, so you can focus on the horizontals?

I'll admit it. I watched the entire 12 minutes from start to finish.

(Also, if you take the S off the end of HTTPS on your link, it'll embed it in your post)

Chris's idea of adding tool holders is a good one. I know there are $35 CAT40 ER holders out there that are cheap Chinese pieces of junk but they would work fine for holding drills and taps and at $35 each I could buy several dozen without breaking the bank. I also like Joe's idea of developing a standard fixture blank and having them on hand for quick fixture fabrication. I have done a bit of this in the past but on a small scale. Another item I am pursuing is the Schunk VeroS zero point clamping system. If I were to outfit ALL of my machine tables and tombstones with these flexibility would be huge but at a steep price.

 

Bob, when you said swapping out tools earlier, did you mean actually changing tools in their holders? Or just popping holders in and out of the magazine? If the former, you definitely need to get tons of dedicated holders. Techniks is my favorite brand. ER holders are less than $100 when bought in quantity, and the quality is excellent. (Make sure you get the Taiwan holders, not their cheaper Chinese SIMIS line). We have some jobs that require swapping 40 tools out of the magazine - and having those tools sitting in a cart right next to the machine makes things go A LOT easier.

I have the same dilemma with the zero point systems out there. I'd love to have them, but I can't justify spending $20,$30,$40,000 dollars on something that's only going to save a tiny bit of time. It takes 1 minute or so to remove the four socket head cap screws and pop off a fixture plate. Here's part of the active "fixture wall" for just one machine. At some point they're gonna go in a huge Lista cabinet. We just 5Sed over 2,000lbs of old fixtures too.

How are you finding your offsets? You can put a block in your post that will calculate the orientation and location of all your TPlanes, and output the G10s.

pardon my ignorance ... what is an RGV?

Rail Guided Vehicle. The little robot that shuffles the pallets around.

 

 

Why not include the third machine in the cell with the others? That way it could do both production and prototype seamlessly. When it isn't busy just start sending pallets to it. I love the idea but it will be a while until I can swing another A51nx :-)

Fear of the RGV going down and knocking out all production capacity. There's another well known place down here that bought the largest LPP (by number of machines and load stations) ever built by Mori Seiki - and they will never do it again. The machines and the system are great, but one tiny hiccup with the RGV, and they have a few million dollars worth of NH-6300s sitting idle.

How do they get on for AS9100 compliance? Lots of customers state that if tooling changes, or the machine gets moved, or the work is made on another machine, then re fair's are required.

Yes I know it's a load of bollox having to re-do a fair because you've changed a cutter, but with this heavy investment their customer must surely know the set-up/way they are operating?

just curious.

I can't speak for them specifically because I don't know the exact details - but my guess is the internal first article is made, inspected, tweaked, made again, inspected again, tweaked again, etc on the standalone. Once they know the process is going to yield a good part, it's moved to it's final resting place in the FMS, where the official first article is run with the push of a button, instead of the arduous task of initial prove out.

 

Making 'proper' steel fixtures would be a last resort for me a pretty much guarantee that the order will never repeat again.

Life experience fix.

There's not really any way to get around it Bob. Are you using Solidworks (or something similar) for your fixture design? One thing we did was standardize on 5x3x29 aluminum flat bar as fixture material for ANY part that would allow it. I have a few different operation libraries for machining the backside of a fixture plate, and a few more libraries for machining particular types of fixture features, like pitbull clamp pockets, uniforce clamp pockets, etc.

Once you start building up some more repeat jobs, an MMC would really help - because you can let it run production while you're farting around programming and setting up the next job. Then you switch out of the schedule and work on your new stuff.

There was a shop down here in LA awhile back that bought two Mori SH5000s with 26 pallets, and a third SH5000 standalone. They used the machines in the FMS for strictly production, and the standalone machine for strictly first articles and fixture building.

Verify doesn't show rapid moves,

Verify shows rapids - in straight lines, and when the moves are for paths on the same plane. If your machine doesn't have GOO Slope Constant, (IE, if your machine dogleg rapids) verify won't accurately show rapid moves.......until now that X7 is out. There is a setting in verify for doglegs.

Does your machine have dogleg rapids? Did you have dogleg rapids turned on in verify?