Shop Holmes

[BigSki]

Originally Posted by JohnRobHolmes

Over time I'll tool up enough to get there. Its a reality check on each feature of a design and how it fits in with the machine and shop tooling. I'm set up for motors primarily!

I completely understand. Your attention to detail and "doing it right" are the reasons that I even approached you.



Today I followed up on chip loading and tool path by going through a program and checking the feeds and speeds against manufacturers specs. Although the Mazak is smart and has lots of auto set feeds and speeds, with IMCO and Sandvik tooling they aren't optimized yet. Evidently I have some really killer aluminum two flute mills, I was doing the calculations and the standard Mazak autosets are 8x slower material removal than what IMCO recommends on the top end!

I'm taking a CAMM111 class this semester, lots of the of learning is on 'toolingU'.com They preach/teach the calculations for RPM and feed rates using some basic calculations, buts ALWAYS refer back to the "experience to have the feel" for how far to push a machine. This is what was drilled into my head during my apprenticeship. On the mill, you basically look at the color of the chips- push it until you see the light "straw" color being produced.

[JohnRobHolmes]

Originally Posted by mtdriver

When I was new to the Mazak (also new to CNC at the same time, lots to tackle for a newbie!) I relied heavily on autosets. I started noticing how much slower some of my programs were than ones that were already proven when I came to that shop.

I started reading up on my selection of tooling, talking to tech guys at MSC and the like about every tool I purchased and how to use it properly and this drew my suppliers attention and I started getting free visits from tooling reps from Sandvik dealers, OSG techs, coolant salesman, etc etc. I learned a lot for free as they wanted me to buy so I let them talk about their stuff. They would show me examples of how I could use my current tooling differently or new tooling altogether to improve efficiency. I played the I dunno? game a lot and that usually led to "let me go to my car and grab you one of those and you can try it out" types of situations.

I was much more willing to push free tooling till it quit working well or failed instead of learning on the stuff I was asking the shop to buy.

In the end I became familiar with what I could do in certain materials with certain tooling and rarely used the auto speeds and feeds anymore. Plus I was getting work done much faster and cleaner.

For as small a shop as we are, I've gotten a lot of sales visits and definitely picked their brains heavily and took notes. A little hard ball generally gets a free tool holder with a pack of inserts, they wanna get us hooked! I'm trying to score a discount on a carbide mini boring bar from sandvik, but they aren't so hard up

Originally Posted by BigSki

I'm taking a CAMM111 class this semester, lots of the of learning is on 'toolingU'.com They preach/teach the calculations for RPM and feed rates using some basic calculations, buts ALWAYS refer back to the "experience to have the feel" for how far to push a machine. This is what was drilled into my head during my apprenticeship. On the mill, you basically look at the color of the chips- push it until you see the light "straw" color being produced.

Reading chips is a huge part of tuning a program, so says the experienced guys. When cutting cans the other day I was getting nasty barbed wire instead of clean chips. Needed to increase the feed 2x and reduce the depth 2x to get the chip more square so it would break. Sacrifice a few seconds of runtime, but gained a minute since I didn't have to clean off tools every cycle.

[JohnRobHolmes]

Christmas time!

Sandvik 12mm Insert drill/ boring bar for speedier can fabrication

Widia 60* threading inserts for whatever

Widia Face groove inserts and LH holder

Sandvik radial groove inserts and holder for super300 bushings

Sandvik small boring bars, one steel one carbide



I haven't researched how to transition from drilling into boring without a tool retract, but I'll figure it out the next time I'm boring solid billet.

[JohnRobHolmes]

New carbide boring bar, new steel boring bar, trashed old one.

Had a tool break that opened the hole for the the next boring bar. Of course without the pilot hole the next tool got mashed into a cone. Steel catches fire with enough pressure and friction !


Carbide bar will let us bore deeper and at increased speeds without chatter. I've learned the puller 500 cans are deep enough that we can't get full power out of the tool inserts with a steel bar. 3000 cans down the road it will have paid for itself in 5 second increments.

[Szczerba]

Tool up! Bore down!

[mtdriver]

John, you running your cans from solid bar?

Oh, those Sandvik CoroDrills are absolute badasses. Youre going to enjoy it.

[JohnRobHolmes]

Dom tube for puller 500s and 400s, solid bar for 520s

[Dravpnir]

That looks like a box of CoroCut 3 you got there. Always nice to see products in use that one has worked with

[mtdriver]

Originally Posted by JohnRobHolmes

Dom tube for puller 500s and 400s, solid bar for 520s

Oh yeah, I forgot about the 520's.

[JohnRobHolmes]

Originally Posted by Dravpnir

That looks like a box of CoroCut 3 you got there. Always nice to see products in use that one has worked with

Yep. Really nice products. Overall I'm so impressed with the quality and consistency of Sandvik that I'll use it whenever possible.


Its been a rough month being a worker short, everything was slipping into disorganization and my tasks have been falling behind. Nothing that affects orders and service, but it slows down progress for our future work. This week my main compressor motor went out to top it off And since my back up compressor isn't up to snuff for the machine I'm stalled for a few days until a new motor arrives. The new worker is helping out leaps and bounds though. In a few weeks we will be back on track and beyond, its been great having an extra hand that is motivated and sharp.

anybody have a spare screw compressor they wanna sell for cheap? I don't want to spend 4 or 8 grand on just a compressor right now!

[meatmonkey]

Heck, with all the other cool stuff you build,

I'm surprised you don't pull that compressor motor apart and rewind it yourself. lol.

I'm always looking forward to your updates in this thread. Continuously striving for improvements is one of the main reasons I run your motors and speed controllers.

[JohnRobHolmes]

I appreciate the kind words and support. I've kept it off the forum mostly, but the past 18 months have been by far the toughest in my life. First a baby and major sleep loss (I love sleep!), closing down volt riders, and then every possible problem between workers and equipment. Get into a good groove, and lose a worker unannounced or have some key tool fail. Fight back for a few weeks or months working 60 hour+ weeks, get another worker trained or fix a machine or deal with whatever, get the shop back in order, get ready to take on new tasks, and as soon as things get smooth the process repeats. I've really felt stagnated with my own personal progress, I've not been able to study electrical power engineering very much and have a hard time working out frequently. Just not enough hours in the day to work on my own improvement.


But then I have to be reminded about all the other important matters in the past 18 months. My son is growing fast and learning like a maniac. My house is comfortable and we don't want for food. I employ people who all enjoy working for me, and the last guy that quit left a position that people were fighting hard to fill. The fellow that we hired took almost a 50% paycut to be part of the team! We have a production turning center, not just a little single tool 0.002" floppy Chinese lathe. We are steady on 20% growth per year since 2005. Finally getting into brushless systems, although its annoying that we are forced into china or Taiwan mass production to meet sustainable market pricing. And although I have tough days or months, I love what I do so much that getting burned out isn't in the cards. So I try to keep my struggles to myself, they are first world problems that I both create and solve.




In regards to the compressor, it's the starting cap. After 15 or 20 cycles the temp breaker in the motor trips. And evidently rebuilding the motor is more expensive than a replacement for Ingersoll, and they don't want me doing it for liability reasons. They said it is because im running a 230v motor on 220v. But then they are sending another 230v motor instead of a 200v one, so it sounds like hot air. New motor should be in tomorrow. And I'm probably going to order a 120 gallon roll compressor. Bringing the noise from 95db to 65db will really improve my day, and we will have a better backup compressor.



One day I'll share the $100 portable microscope project we are working on. Basically taking a cheap 7" tablet and turning it into a tool inspection device. It's tedious to remove tools for wear inspection, this allows inspection in the machine. This device has a remote handheld microscope and 4x the screen size and resolution of anything I've found, except for tabletop $1000 laboratory systems. Right now the hangup is getting the camera output displayed, Jonathan is writing a little android app for it. Once that is done we will strip down the OS for just a few tasks and longer battery life.


Andrew has been gearing up for restarting my dyno project. We have a few little ones to use, but this project is so close to complete and 100x the data quality of a regular toy dyno like the turbodyno. We can test batteries and ESCs with it too, a real workhorse of information. Really excited to kick that off again.

[doublej]

Work and ideas come and go, stop and enjoy life from time to time or you forget the reasons you push yourself so hard.
I have to tell myself this quite a bit lately.

[JohnRobHolmes]

I can't fib, I enjoy the shit out of 99% of my life even when its tough. I ride fast electric bikes to work, get a few hours a week to play with toys, make things from scratch more days than not, and when things are smoother I can enjoy the occasional short work day and early beer. I'm really trying to get a 30 hr week so I have 10 left for pure play. It's when I come up with the best ideas! Get to work early, get done by three, sounds lovely to me. I've done it before, its just a lot harder to get back to that point right now while I'm juggling the cnc plus training a worker and finishing up one straggler project from volt riders.

[C*H*U*D]

Originally Posted by JohnRobHolmes

One day I'll share the $100 portable microscope project we are working on. Basically taking a cheap 7" tablet and turning it into a tool inspection device.

I'm very interested in this...I'll be watching for it!

[JohnRobHolmes]

Solving one issue, the backup compressor isn't good enough. So the main compressor is now the backup. And the new main is... A little big.... That's the lathe hiding behind it.

[JohnRobHolmes]

Originally Posted by C*H*U*D

I'm very interested in this...I'll be watching for it!

Android pain in the ass tablets. We are having to write a program to get the microscope working right. Went from being supposedly easy to a big project real fast. I'll get back to it after the compressor is installed.

[sickcivic95]

Nice to hear you'll be back up to par for air anyway.... What size ingersoll did you end up going with? I'm in the market for another compressor for a shop running 2 machines, and the style you have falls right into what I'm looking at. Some people I've talked with have said their cfm ratings aren't what the machines are putting out but still high enough to run w/o issue and for the price you can't find many that match them...

In My main shop I run a Kaeser sk20 but don't feel like dropping that kind of coin when its overkill. If I had plans for more machines or tooling that would require one I'd think about biting the bullet but still wouldn't like it.

-Dan

[JohnRobHolmes]

Got the UP6-5-150, 16cfm rated and 120g tank. The Mazak is supposed to consume 6cfm @ 0.5mPA but I don't believe it, it eats enough to keep the up6 in steady state mode just under the 150psi cutoff. If I crank up the Mazak's regulator to 0.55 mPA the compressor will drop to 125psi after a few hours and run steady state. Its good for a rotary to run all the time though, much better than starting and stopping every few minutes.


My wife and son were out of town this past weekend so I had such a wonderful schedule arranged that would put some extra hair on anyone's chest. Was going to get rowdy Friday night and then work all weekend on the lathe, it was going to be quite epic! But then I got food poisoning Friday and basically went between a couch, bed, and toilet until Monday.

The lathe didn't run for three days and the shop cooled down more than I wanted, so this week I've been running against thermal growth and shrinkage. It's quite interesting to chase, but at the same time very tedious to keep the parts dialed in for a press fit. While we normally keep a 0.0002" window of tolerance on press fits, temp drift of the tool holders puts 0.0012" of change per 10 degree C change! So shutting down the machine when it's running well means that I have to redo tolerances and watch each part for the first ten, then each tenth part, until about 3 hours in when it starts to be predictable again and we can run 20 or 30 without much change to the product.


Just started hitting predictable cuts again today, yeehaw!

[sickcivic95]

That sounds like a lot of fun. Sorry to hear about the food poisoning.. Those numbers do seem really low for consumption on that size machine, but I've seen people running smaller compressors w/o issue on similar.

Press fits that tight suck no matter what. We have some material cut to within .0125 of our final part size and Not having consistent temps throw major monkey wrenches in for us as well. Pulling pallets of 6061 off the back of a truck in 20° F weather sucks enough, but then having to wait while they heat up and and then hoping the spindle and holders have been run long enough to hold it.... All while still having to stop production for inspections makes we want to pull the little bit of hair out I have left.

-Dan