Yeah I'd look into lang. I ran into the same thing trying to retrofit one of my machines and it turned into a PITA. All you need is a rotary union but the trunion has to be setup for it . I'm sure if matsuura offers it as an option the trunion is machined correctly already. I've been following you on instagram. (I'm dennisrathi on there)

My friend used to work for him. They moved him into the office from the shop floor lol. Dude is a legend.

Try to move the A axis without the unlock code. does it work?

Who said this was "old school"? Lol :2guns:

I agree with this. The smaller ones are crap. Might as well throw them away as soon as you take the holder out of the tube.

Now if only they setup a web store to buy direct...

Whats the cost of one? Local shop I know just bought one as well.

I'm not excusing the tool change issues but if its the same arm / tool change design they use now it is adjusted very easily. I had some thermal growth on my machines and added scales to all three axis. Here is a question... Why do all builders charge so much money for scales options when you can buy them direct from heidenhain at $2000-2500 per axis. $9k worth of hardware and maybe 1-2 days for labor? Mazak wants $40k to add scales to a machine for example.

I usually have Destiny custom make me tools like this.

A friend of mine owns a G350 and says its the best machine he has ever used. He has two mitsui seikis in the same shop that have given him tons of issues. He said the only down fall is the horizontal design is a PITA for prototyping since it is so hard to access the part for on machine measurement/checks / view inside the machine.

Are you cutting aluminum? I've had good luck with the AB Tool Shear Hog on the smaller shank in a long extended tool holder. The tool dia is like .030 smaller than a long extended holder. That was only 8" deep but worked fine.

I ended up just biting the bullet and buying them. I was planning on using 5 1/4-20 pitbulls. 3 on the front to push it against the hard stop. then 2 on the back for extra security. Bars are 18" long. Each bar holds 4 parts you don't see

I have my own small shop that is never at 100% full capacity. Always have atleast 1 brother vertical idle . Plan is to make a ton of these using the 4th axis and just part off on the machine / clean up with a swipe of a file. I think I can make them for less than $6.00 easily after run time, material, and heat treat. We will see . I would use a ton more of these clamps if they weren't so damn expensive. They are very reasonable buying 30 at a time or so but after its all said and done I'll need about 250 of them right now...Could use another 250 in another month or so. I did contact my local distributor. $12 each was the best they can do.

Looks like I'll be making my own. Can't bring myself to spend $2k on them at one time and haven't found anything similar. Going to make my own "double" style for between parts.

Cutting aluminum Have .125 of material to grip on. The material to grip on gets cut away so biting in is required to hold it down during milling. I like to have one side push it against the hard stop in the fixture and some clamps on the opposite side to really make sure it won't lift. Distance between bars is 1". Could prob go to 1.25-1.5. I have a smaller version of this fixture running now using 7 8-32 pitbulls running now. 4 to push it against the fixture stop. 3 to bite down at the end.

Not sure I follow?

Building some fixtures and need around 200-400 1/4 pitbull clamps depending on what I decide to do. Mitebite wants $11-12.500 a clamp assembly.... Turns into some serious money at those numbers. Anything similar around? I'm about to build my own.

I have 2 of the cheaper 828d (Quaser machines ) and have found the best support guy at Siemens. Very knowledgeable and usually has answers for me in 24 hours. Before when I was dealing with the factory and waiting for replies.....I was not too happy. I do love the control though. Very easy for me to teach people how to use and the std options are very nice. I just bought Renishaw Axiset as well and have it blending very very well. It is way better than the Fanuc machines I have in the shop for surfacing as well (besides the NH5000 31i but thats a different league of machine)

Methods seems to be pushing this technology venture buy back Yasda from 2005 (installed 2010) to a lot of local shops here. They offered it to me but couldn't justify that much money on something built in 2005. The Yasda seems like a very impressive machine but according to methods there is only like 1 in California and its down in Los Angeles area.

I went with 2 240gb SSD drives in raid 0 on my newest build. Seems considerably faster than my other workstation with just 1 ssd.

Gaming card vs Quadro. I know a lot of you say the gaming is just as good in Mastercam. Wonder how it compares in other CAM softwares...

Destiny in Santa Clara will grind a regular HSS/Cobalt drill into a step drill.

x2 I normally would get a cutter grinder to build me a step tool. They would add a pilot of the thru hole diameter to help stabilize the bottom when cutting it flat.

All the programs that aren't supposed to have the probe have a IF/Goto statement at the top to change tools . Super paranoid of this.

Thats the name of my game....