Thread: Machinery Relocation.

Pity it's leaving our sunny shores but interesting stuff never the less. (Perhaps we will have to start calling you "Machinewhisperer")

Michael

Originally Posted by Michael G

Pity it's leaving our sunny shores but interesting stuff never the less.

Thats the state of our industry. Imagine any sort of hydraulic / pneumatic fitting / widget, this thing willl drop one off every 9 seconds. There just isn't that volume left here anymore. Melb customer that has just sold it, only turned in on 3 months in 12. I only put it where it is about Oct / Nov 2012. That covered current contracts, that used to take several CNC and cam auto lathes working round the clock.

Regards Phil.

I started this last Wednesday, the young bloke you can see in this picture.
https://www.woodworkforums.com/attach...2&d=1407148503

He's the son of an other client. His old man said "take him and teach him some thing" The old man even offered to pick up his wages.Thats day 1. Day one is always boring and mundane, its mostly cleaning, these machine's run straight oil, not soluble. Covered in swarf, you have to get them back to scratch. That means pulling on Nitrile glooves and getting it squared away.

He pulled the pin end of day one. Not been back since.

-Phil

Wow that's an interesting Machine

Nice machine, I could use one of them...

Just a dumb question, how do they label the 27 axes in the code... X,Y,Z,A,B,C ... etc there's only 26 letters in the alphabet.. we run out of letters

Ray

Originally Posted by RayG

Nice machine, I could use one of them...

Just a dumb question, how do they label the 27 axes in the code... X,Y,Z,A,B,C ... etc there's only 26 letters in the alphabet.. we run out of letters

Ray

use chinese ..or just make it up ...like some of those words you use..lol

greek maybe

yeah..what do they use?

G/day Phil, I watched the yoowie and couldn't help but think that if you had of read the manual first it is likely that you would have been able to fly the thing to it's new destination

shed

Originally Posted by RayG

Nice machine, I could use one of them...

Just a dumb question, how do they label the 27 axes in the code... X,Y,Z,A,B,C ... etc there's only 26 letters in the alphabet.. we run out of letters

Ray

The German alphabet has extra letters with, among other things, umlauts

Mick.

Originally Posted by RayG

Nice machine, I could use one of them..

You could have had this one for cheap, about a 1/6th of its new price. It was $2m in 2006.

Originally Posted by RayG

Just a dumb question, how do they label the 27 axes in the code... X,Y,Z,A,B,C ...

Lots of X & Z's. 8 of each. The station positions don't change but the spindle's do. Some positions have multiple X/Z slides aranged around them.

Each station you basically write a program for that, then run them all at once. Its posible to run only an individual spindle at any of the 6 positions.

Regards Phil

Hi Phil,
Just for interest what is the ususl lifespan of a machine like that, assuming its being used constantly. And if well cared for to they just wear till they no longer hold adequate tolerances or is it more of a software/hardware issue. Can you and do you recondition them when they wear out or do owners just trade up.
As I look at my 60-70s manual lathes I wonder what is the future of these high tech CNC machinery in 40-50years.
Thanks
Mark

Originally Posted by markgray

Hi Phil,
Just for interest what is the ususl lifespan of a machine like that, assuming its being used constantly.

G'day Mark.

I'm not real sure, theres only ever been 6 of these in the country. Until late 2012 they were side by side out in Hoppers Crossing. I gave the Germans a hand when they were new, then moved the lot of them, when they went under. This one is on its third installation.

I'd guess 15 - 20 years. The 840D Seimens is still a current platform. That will have support for about that time. Mechanically, you could keep them going for ever. Theres some incredible engineering in them. 3 of the 32mm machines remain in Melbourne, side by side, in a company that makes "push to conect" plumbing fittings, for domestic plumbing. They run 3 shifts, I was there earlier today. They are talking about going to 7 days a week. All of it export for the States.

I can see those machines still being there in 10 years. They all run straight cutting oil, which helps. Fire is the biggest risk. That all have Co2 extinguiser systems on them. (I have an other customer, with a different machine, that has a 17 minute CCTV video of their machine on fire in the middle of the night, until the fire brigade got there).

I gave some of the slides a tickle up on those 3 machines. They had ceramic metal sprayed retainers. It wasn't so much wear as things moving as in a crash or broken tool.

I'd never recondition one, theres just not enough hours in a week. But you can get in done in Europe. Done plenty of maintenance on them. The spindles and bar feed rotate. Every thing needs to rotate with it. Power and feedback to the spindles, hydraulics for clamp / unclamp, profibus for switchs. It all runs straight up the guts of the bar feeder, then spins 6 x 60 deg, then spins back to un-wind its self. Lots to go wrong in there.

Theres a 12 path rotary hydraulic coupling in the end of the bar feeder, just to pass fluid though to the collets. I'll have some pictures in the next few days. I was hoping to pull the bar feeder today, but all we did, was to just make a mess cleaning out all the coolant / hydraulic tanks.

I've been getting better life out of those rotary seals by getting them custom CNC'ed machined by a mob call Chesterton Custom Seals in Perth. They have lasted longer than the Euro originals, at a fraction of the price.

Regards Phil.

Here is a vid of a multispindle lathe in action for those wondering what actually is a multispindle lathe... The vid is not of an Index though..

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=om613Cfp0Ag

Originally Posted by markgray

Hi Phil,
Just for interest what is the ususl lifespan of a machine like that, assuming its being used constantly. And if well cared for to they just wear till they no longer hold adequate tolerances or is it more of a software/hardware issue. Can you and do you recondition them when they wear out or do owners just trade up.
As I look at my 60-70s manual lathes I wonder what is the future of these high tech CNC machinery in 40-50years.
Thanks
Mark

I think you're right about the electronics Mark, from that perspective I'm guessing, maybe 20 years? Probably less. One channel of my Heidenhain DRO wasn't working when I got it, hasn't been supported by the manufacturer for years and the verdict was to throw it out. No manuals, no information, nothing. It was just fortunate that it came from "my era" in electronics with fairly basic ICs and I was able to use the good channel to help me diagnose the fault with the bad channel, but there's no way it would be commercially viable to have somebody fix it. That was only a $1000 DRO, but I guess the same thing will happen with a CNC machine. I wonder who Phil uses to repair ancient electronics in older CNC machines? Hey maybe if things go turtle at work there's hope for me yet, and I've found my niche back with my electronics cap back on

Phil what was the approximate cost of each of these cells when first purchased? Sadly I think you're going to be seeing more of this type of work in the coming years as manufacturers who were supporting the auto industry close up shops.

Vacuum packing is a good idea. We both know what happens when they're not!

Thanks so much for this Phil it is a really interesting topic to me having done it many times before on various index cam autos the lovely thing about all index machines to this day i suppose is the replace able slides for each axis

Index certainly know there stuff that machine you could budget on 10 years trouble free and then a light rebuild of the slides and screws and the most troublesome the cables

Pretty sad when a bloke walks away after one day

Great topic

Bruce