Hose clamp a surface indicator to the stock. Hose Clamps are cheap, have lots of range, and hold the indicator tight.

i could never figure out why mills are typically IPM. I have never got an answer besides "Thats how mills are programmed". I think it only makes sense if thats how you learned, otherwise it doesnt make sense. Usually we are trying to eliminate extra calculations. Has anyone ever seen manufacturers recommended feed and speeds expressed as IPM?

NTY3= Great for small complicated bar work, Ø40mm max. Lower turret comes from the left side so you want to do most of your lower turning on the left spindle, Otherwise Chips will destroy the lower turret wipers over and over again. This might be common with all lower turret style machines, i dont know. Pretty much unlimited capabilities and the most user friendly Canned cycles ever. The NT Nurse side of the Fanuc control is fantastic. The Y axis interlocks are annoying when not in milling mode. 4"ish max stickout on drills and boring bars before you hit the way covers. I would purchase another one for the right work.

What i do is put some retracts in every now and than and call another toolchange. if you set up the redundant tooling on the mazak it will change to the next tool in the group if the life of the current tool is over. i usually use it on tombstone work and when i retract on the tombstone rotation i will call up the tool again. if the life is over then it will grab the new tool. I dont know how to have mcam do it but i dont need it to often. i just hand code it in. ex; M6T1B0(T1 AND T2 ARE IN GROUP 1) CUT; CUT; G0G91G30Z0 B90 M6T1(IF THE TOOL LIFE CAME UP DURING B0 FACE THIS WILL ACTUALLY CALL THE NEXT TOOL IN THE GROUP) CUT; CUT; M1 Kind of hard to explain but hopfully you get the idea. If your machine takes itself to the toolchange position on an M6 it might just be a matter of calling a toolchange every so often during long roughing. On our PFH-4800 fusion if you call a tool change and the tool is already in the spindle then it wont go home. test it out.

i would say its 50-50. We run around 1000 pcs a week thru it. We change jaws once or twice a month at most. Its held up very well and our chuck is probably 10 years old. Its been a production chuck for 3 years or so. Before that it was our prototype hard turning chuck. We are happy with it. hth

We use the air actuated 6" chuck. We use it with aluminum pie jaws on some parts that have .0002" roundness callouts on them. We do skim the jaws everytime we replace them. I have never ran steel jaws on them though.

typically the cutoff tools in all our lathes never get taken out. So they are already offset in Z to leave the desired amount of stock. So not really an issue for us. But i agree it would be nice to have a "stock to leave" for this.

Or make your Z move in the program use a variable in it. Z-11.7(top of slot) Z-[12.7+#700](bottom of slot) the variables can be incremented just like a tool offset.

i have used K0 on some machines

yes its still 4 for the card. I think it only says 1-3 on the settings page but 4 should still be ok.

If we have some fussy diameters like that we will add a variable to the X numbers. X[.933+#510] Z-.76 X[1.245+#511] Z-2.5 Documentation is key. Use the tool offset to move them all and the variables to adjust individually.

On Naka's M96 is sync M97 cancel sync and M92 is phase sync. Dont remember for sure but i think we adjust the grid shift parameter to line them up were we want them when we transfered on the fly. Like Rob and Ron said above if you have to be dead on and you can adjust the Work offset for C if you need zero to be a certain place between the jaws or whatever.

We dprnt to a flashcard on a 31I. Thing is that once you PCLOS you can not open it again otherwise you get an error. How we get around it is to POPEN the port and not close it in the program. Before you take the card out you Will PLCOS in MDI to get the file written. If you dont close the port and take the card out you will get a file with 0kp(nothing in it) and the next cycle you get the error again.

whats wrong with the microcentric collets? We have used Hainbuch collets in a microcentric and vice versa without issue.

Just out of curiosity does anyone know why mastercam doesnt include a default MD/CD of a table table VMC setup? Is it because its the most common 5 axis setup?

James is right on. Except i like mazak also. Personally i would never buy just an indexer on a horizontal, We have 6 horizontals total, 3 with 24 pallet cell and 3 standalones and only 1 of them has a full forth axis. Guess which one is the busiest and which is the one everyone wants to put there job on? The full 4th. It is a severe pain in the Arse to indicate and line up your pallet on its base when you cant just workoffset it out if you have to. Indicate 0, indicate 180, hammer, indicate 0, tighten base a little, reindicate, tap, index reindicate,now check 90 and 270..repeat.etc. sucks but you gotta do it.

Option 2 here. i will usually balance cut with both tools until about 3/4 the way thru and then have the next turret get ready for the next tool while the last pass is being cut. Tool pressure from roughing usually reaks havoc on the finisher. Sometimes its worth it to just lie to the program though to get the right sizes though(but i hate doing it). Also with a long part i might rough the back with one tool and the front with another. Never considered option 1. curious to the thought behind that one. sounds interesting gonna try it tommorrow. That would make programming MUCH easier when syncing though, hmmmmm.

I agree with scott. Mastercam should easily handle this without all the workarounds. If the geometry is arcs and the tool is defined then Mastercam should be able to spot different depths EASILY.

Ron, What you have been able to accomplish with mastercam and the wait codes is very remarkable and impressive. What you are wanting this time is the next step and i can see it as being a very tall order. If anyone can do it you can but without simulation before running in the machine i just cant see being able to safley do it in mastercam without simulating everything. What you have now works because its still primarily 1 tool at a time and your are syncing the beginning and and end of each operation. The next step as you said is being able to figure out which tool will get done first and get ready for the next operation and figure out where the upper turret will be when the lower turret is in position ready to cut or vice versa. I dont think mastercam has enough machine parameters in the machine def to actually calculate accel/decel, home position for each turret, index time, etc. for it to know where the tools are at all times. This is were they are extremely lacking. well its lacking completely in syncing but... I am not so sure if even esprit can get you perfectly optimized yet either(been awhile since i looked into again). My multi turret/spindle expierience is with Nakamura NTY3's. These have 2 upper dedicated turrets and a lower turret that can work on either spindle. For awhile i could imagine that i could get close with mastercam. What i have found out is that it sort of gets me in the zip code. I need a program for each turret. i program for the left spindle and then the right spindle. After that i pull out tools and put them into the lower turret program for each side. Then i add in the proper Codes for which turret is controlling the spindle at any given time. This gets me closer. Then the actual prove out is when you start finding out what your actual timing situation is. And dont forget that if you are proving out a program with the rapids at 25% you will have a completly different timing then at 100%. Makes it pretty scary to proveout. If you want to optimize your program further you will be copying and pasting waitcodes left and right. Moving spindle speed codes up and down and all kinds of things. Then, then when you finaly get to see everything run together you see more subtle or not so subtle changes you can make again. which starts the entire process over again. Depends on how much cycletime you want to save. We run mainly production so its every possible second counts. Its not uncommon when setting up to find that if i took a tool off the upper turret and put in the lower turret that i could save 3 seconds. Then that move opens up other small improvements. Most of them would be easy improvements on a single turret machine. Besides during a transfer i dont use many waitcodes at all. I just counted in one of my programs that has 24 tools total and 140 second cycletime. 7 tools from the lower turret work on the left spindle(4 of them are syncd with the upper turret cutting also), and 3 lower turret tools cut on the right spindle(1 sync'd with the upper turret). i have only 10 wait codes between all the turrets. Ive gotton pretty good at it but its still takes a few hours to get it all together once i am at the machine proving out. I watch it run a week later and still see that i could take a few more seconds off but it would take a few hours to do it. Can Mastercam or ANY other cam possible now how tool pressure is going to affect the dimensions of the part? You really dont know till you get in there and try it. In summery; If mastercam could do it then i would prefer mastercam. Are they going to hit a homerun at thier first at bat? True accurate simulation is the single most important feature to get all you can out of these expensive machines. Is it worth the time it takes to fully optimize a program? Is taking 2 hours to take 10 seconds off a 5 minute cycle time for 50pcs worth it? Sorry for this post but its hard not to sound like a crazy person talking about multi axis multi turret/spindle machines. :bonk: Good luck everyone,

Have the ability to machine only undercuts you have selected long a profile. Say you have a part with many 2mm grooves in the profile and some long undercuts also. If you want to rough out the long undercuts and check allow tool to plunge the tool will try to plunge into all the 2mm grooves along with the long ones. To get around it now you have to create new geometry.

Thad you have to have the program name listed twice. O1234 (MILL POCKET) (MILL POCKET) probably throw another *sprogname in the header.

A roughing toolpath that varies the depth of cut. The SFM option for drilling and milling. Wait code and sync support, but dont stop at just being able to sync dual turrets. There are many 3 and some 4 turret machines out there now. I am programming Nakamura NTY3's. The only useful thing i get from mastercam for these is the guts of the toolpaths. Anything having to do with multi turret ect simulation.

hose clamp and a surface indicator

haha. thanks, now i dont have any problems either.. You know for some reason i never noticed the portrait landscape options on the main page... Wow what a dummyhed i am.

I was trying to print out a drawing i made today. I could not get it to print landscape..idk. I click property, select landscape, ok, in the preview window still no landscape. Go back into properties and portrait is selected. Try again everything looks ok in the preview then print, portrait no landscape. Anyone seen this before?