We have a 15hp kaeser with the built in dryer for a shop with 7 cnc's. (5 mills, 2 lathes) At our old shop we had it on a mezzanine and the constant noise drove me insane. At our new shop we have it in a covered space outside which has been great. I wouldn't go back to a piston compressor...ever.

We use TiCN coated roll tap OSG 1400100108 on 49% nickel parts all the time. $14.20 from Western Tool. It never occurred to me to peck tap a form tap but maybe that works. We go 1500 rpms. Drill #54. We can do a thousand holes (or more) per tap...typically about .100 deep.

Thanks guys!

5-15% elongation when in thin strip form. I have about 20 different parts to make. Most of them are 5-8 inch rings x 1-2 inches thick. These parts have to be annealed after machining for their magnetic properties. I receive material that is hot forged from billet. I'll probably anneal these before I even start on them and again after roughing....then again at final anneal. If a .006 x 2.0 strip will elongate 5-15%....how do I calculate what an 8" ring will do without crazy simulation software? This was my initial thought...even if I do end up milling it.

http://cartech.ides.com/datasheet.aspx?i=103&e=200&c=TechArt

Ron, would you use the flat created by the end mill as the finish for the floor and the boring bars just for the walls?

Thanks for the ideas. I'll let you know my progress.

I'm thinking I have to order a custom face groove tool. Any other ideas? Material is 49% cobalt. The order is for 1 each of about 7 similar parts. Anode_shunt.SLDPRT

Thank you gentlemen!

OK, so if I want to setup OP2 I should copy the part and flip it? What I did for my first part was copy +D+Z and used dynamic rotate to get it orientated for op 2. It seemed to work good but now when i copied and pasted to a new machine group things got wacky. Thanks for the help!

Getting my feet wet with lathe so this may be the first of many questions to come:- Can I change wcs / tc plane inside the toolpath manager? I copied a bunch of operations from one machine group to another and my planes got all funky. It doesn't look like there is a box to change them like you can with mill. I'm using X9

A threadmill with a facing insert?

Bob, you say (and I believe you) that the Makino produces $200k more in a year then your Haas. I'm curious, did you have a customer lined up telling you you're getting this ramp up in business and you're forced to find a way to get it done? It's one thing to add capacity but it's another to find work to feed that's capacity. It sucks adding capacity and then waiting for that forecast that doesn't come to fruition.

This may sound like a silly question but when running a cell of horizontals do you take into consideration the materials you're cutting in each station? I have 5 haas verticals and run nickel in 3 of them exclusively, aluminum in one exclusively. I assume to maximize productivity in a cell your recycle bins are mixed with whatever materials are run through in que. My nickel scrap (not so much recently) is valuable and only worth half if it's contaminated with other chips.

Bob, you do not mess around. Congratulations!

Looks awesome! I cant believe you fit two horizontals, a vertical and 4 dudes in 1200 sq ft.

I love that you can keep the planes window open while working...Now I need a new monitor. X9 so far so good for me:) ...but I do very simple stuff compared to most guys on here.

Thank you for posting that!

Anything exciting?

When using HSM techniques in tough material are you guys drilling a pilot hole for tool entry? I'm milling out a 60mm dia. pockets x 30mm deep in core iron. ASTM A848. I've been helical ramping in with a 1.25" sumitomo 3-insert cutter. By all accounts it's working pretty good. Do you think using HSM with a solid carbide would do better?

Yup....parameter 43. I had HAAS machines shipped to me (new) with different 43 settings.

I used DuraMill end mills for years to rough my nickel parts. All of a sudden their end mills would snap on the first or second part. They came out but couldn't explain it other to say it must have been a 'bad batch' of carbide. My situation wasn't that bad because I could just pop in another brand of cutter. Being custom tools, I feel for you. It's not like you don't have other things to deal with.

So my '93 HAAS VF1 is worth more then a '93 Makino Horizontal!

I bought a sager earlier this year largely based on reading this thread (and others) I'm happy overall but it's a beast (17") and the battery life isn't great. Neither of these are a big deal to me because I'm typically at my desk (I mean bar) when using it at home. I bought my wife a macbook for Christmas. The sales guys told me they're good for "3-D CAD" booting it up in Windows. I haven't seen a thread on here about the macbook for several years. Is anyone running mastercam on a macbook? If it runs good on a macbook I would consider it. It's a beautiful machine. No fans on the bottom, super-slick, amazing display and an 8 hour battery life

I have a kia lathe with a fanuc Oi-TB control. The memory is full on the control so I'm trying to backup my programs via the PCMCIA card. I can load programs to the card one by one Prog > Dir > Type in prog. # > punch When I try to send all the programs at once doing this... prog > dir > O0001, O9999 > punch All the programs are consolidated into one large file There must be a parameter/procedure that controls the way the programs are loaded onto the card. Any ideas? Also, this card is located in the back of the machine in the control cabinet...not in front...and there's no 'floppy' function.