Press Feeder

mmcmdl said:
I think we all call them dance rollers because they seem to " dance " while running . We made sets for shrink sleeve machines that would accumulate 5 minutes worth of run time when the rolls ran out . The operators had 5 minutes to splice the new rolls to the expiring rolls , thus the line never stopped . :encourage:
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We used to do that with the rolled roofing line I used to run, about 50 years ago. Had big accumulator systems on the infeed and outfeed of the machine, depending on the product we were running, we would have 3 or 4 minutes to make the splice. Used a flat iron and some kind of heat sensitive cloth tape.
 
Exactly ! I wish I had the knowledge you have of the electrical ends of these machines .............................................





I would be " dangerous " . :grin:
 
mattthemuppet2 said:
always a pleasure to follow your projects Jim, I never fail to learn something new!
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Thank you Matt.

Well another day and a few more chips.

Here is the bracket blank screwed to the fixture plate.
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And in process. First remove the material between the parts because not doing so will result in a small bit of material that is floating around that could jam somewhere and potentially break a rather expensive end mill. More on breaking expensive endmills later. :rolleyes:

I'm always amazed at the fast shutter speed of my cheap little camera. That spindle is turning 2200 RPM in this picture, no motion blur at all.
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And profiling the outside of the parts
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And finished, about 18 minutes run time. The endmill path around the part is just visible, you can't catch a fingernail on it. Almost not there.
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Then on to the next piece. It cut the two 3/8 slots perfectly then rapid over to do the outside profile and SNAP o_O A brand new 3/8, 3 flute, solid carbide, aluminum cutting Onsrud endmill (about $45). It won't cut 1/8 deep at 100 IPM and that RPM. I was looking at the G code on the screen just before this happened and saw it coming and was already moving to the E-stop , but I wasn't fast enough. :faint:
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The problem was caused by a programmer (me) malfunction. The clearance height was supposed to be set at 1.5 inches, NOT 0.5 inches. 1.5 inch clearance height will be needed for a later part, would not need that much for this particular part but it saves confusion when everything is the same. The tool needs to clear the top of the material, plus the height of the hold down screw heads. In this case, 0.5 inches clearance height puts the tool 1/8 inch INTO the 5/8 thick material.:eek: In my defense, I have my default clearance height set at 0.5 inches because I normally set Z zero to the top of the work, but in this case where I have a common fixture, I have Z zero set to the top of the fixture plate or the bottom of the workpiece which works out fine when working with material of different thicknesses, as long as the clearance height is set correctly for the operation.

Things can go south in a hurry on a CNC machine. I really hate it when the machine does exactly what it's told to do rather than what I want it to do. :grin:

I have gone through all of the CAM operations and made sure the clearance heights are set correctly. Anyway, grab another $45 end mill out of the drawer, stuff it in the holder, re-zero, and finish the part. I can save the part, a little surface blemish is not a problem, and that surface will be hidden when installed.
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More tomorrow...... Stay tuned
 
bugger! The best lessons are the most expensive, right?

Would something like the following work as replacements? I have quite a few YG-1 endmills and they work really well. no different to Niagara or other major brands in my hands.

 
mattthemuppet2 said:
bugger! The best lessons are the most expensive, right?

Would something like the following work as replacements? I have quite a few YG-1 endmills and they work really well. no different to Niagara or other major brands in my hands.

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Might be worth a look, for roughly the same end mill there is about a $4 price difference.
 
I didn't get a lot done yesterday, just one part machined. First I had to get my truck into the transmission shop for a rebuild, second gear was pretty much gone. A typical problem for Dodge Diesels with around 180K miles. I don't have enough energy to do it myself, and we have a local shop that does it right.

Then I got home and started setting up the next piece to machine, did an air cut and the machine randomly hung on a transition. That's not good, go into the program to figure out what was happening. Found the problem, I made a program change a couple weeks ago to smooth out the operation, well I created a new problem when I did that. Typical programming issues. About an 1 1/2 hours later I figured out how to fix the problem and ran a few more air cuts to make sure everything was going to behave.

Then spend the next hour or so setting up the lathe for the next run of parts.

Finally I got around to making chips for this project.

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By this time it's about 6:00 PM and I'm tired. Not to mention I ran out of propane for my heaters. So done for the day. And today I have to wait for my son to get here with his truck so we can go get propane, so haven't gotten much done today either.

And now I have some stupid scammer pop ups on my computer telling me that my computer has a virus, I wish I had time to screw with these guys. I have some ''special'' software that they would get when they connected to my computer. It will turn their computer into a brick, don't mess around with an old programmer. Time to clean my computer. I don't think I'm going to get a lot done on this project today.
 
More fun and games. Got a couple more parts roughed out today.

This is where the pucker factor goes up a bit o_O , 3/16 slot, 5/8 deep with a 1/8 inch end mill.
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I was distracted when I was setting this up so forgot to turn down the feed speed. I had it set for about 6.5 IPM and it should have been 3.5 IPM for these conditions. But it still made it through 1 slot and about 95% of the second one. So I'm happy. Used a racetrack spiral down tool path.

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And the part on the left semi-finished as is the bore on the right part.... Why semi-finished? Because the center pocket is a bearing bore and I'm having a problem interpolating a round hole, it's 0.002 out of round. I expected that so left the bore 0.010 undersize. I'll bore it in a later operation. I need to work on my servo tuning to correct this. I can't find any backlash in the machine.

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And done. This is all I got done on this project today due to other interruptions, about 40 minutes of actual machining time.
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At the same time I was trying to run this part, I was also making parts on the CNC lathe and was having material feeding problems. The ''precision'' ''1.500'' inch round bar stock we bought isn't very precision. It actually measures 1.507 and won't feed properly through a 1.500 collet. So tear down that setup and change over to another product that will feed through a collet. I'll put the chuck on the lathe to run the 1.5 inch parts, there is always a workaround. The bar stock we bought is American made by Kaiser Aluminum, not sure if it is in spec or not. Doesn't matter, we'll use it anyway, but will let our vendor know.

On another note, I got my truck back from the transmission shop, Trans-Medic in Gresham for you local guys. It seems to work fine now, actually shifts. :encourage: They do good work and I recommend them.

Don't know how much work I going to get done on this project today, I need to go to a customer and make some control modifications to a large CNC router. Too many projects at the same time.

More later....... Stay tuned.
 
you sure do keep yourself busy Jim :) I'm surprised there wasn't much of a difference with the YG-1 endmills, though I'm guessing you use a long LOC than the one I posted.

When you say you got 95% through the 2nd slot, what happened with the last 5%?!

I won't bore you with what I did today, it was miserable and stressful!
 
mattthemuppet2 said:
you sure do keep yourself busy Jim :) I'm surprised there wasn't much of a difference with the YG-1 endmills, though I'm guessing you use a long LOC than the one I posted.

When you say you got 95% through the 2nd slot, what happened with the last 5%?!

I won't bore you with what I did today, it was miserable and stressful!
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1 1/4 inch LOC, same as the YG-1.

The end mill broke before it finished the last 5%. Not a problem, it's just screw slot. I can finish it out with a die grinder in a few seconds.

Oh, and the control mod on the router was just moving a wire to another terminal. About 10 seconds. And about 10 minutes to figure out which wire to move and where to. The travel time was considerably more than the on-site time, they'll be billed for both.;)
 
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