PriddyShiddy
Cast Iron
- Joined
- Mar 1, 2011
- Location
- anaheim, ca
I know it sounds a little bonkers, but looking for input and if there are any issues I might run into running our parts with the Haas control. I know the control on the mill side (pre-NextGen) but Switched all of our production mills over to Speedios.
I'm not a lathe guy. The only CNC lathes I've owned were to make our blank tool shanks (old Miyano BND without Y, then Hardinge Swiss I never got working right, now Citizen A20). We are just milling round bars into square blanks 2.5" long and parting off. That's it. Turn a 1/2" round bar into a 3/8" square shank 2.5" long with rounded corners running 3/8" end mill down one side, then the next etc. When I ran these on the Miyano I used a spring loaded live center and it worked great, but didn't have Y axis and had to use the tip of the end mill instead of the side, terrible on tooling.
Getting the ground O1 tool steel bars in time, in each size has become a nightmare. Haven't gotten 5/8" bars since February and the prices have tripled over the last 5 years. Since I have no choice now but to import my own (likely non-ground) bars I could save 50% and not have to send them for grinding just switching from a swiss to a chucker so I can work from oversized non-ground bars. Slower, but saves me 1/3 of the machine cost per year on metal.
On the ST20Y with barfeed it would just be part off, center drill, feed out 2.625", bring in the programable hydraulic tailstock with live center, run and end mill (2 passes per side) at C0,C90,C180,C270, then parts catcher call and part off. Simple... but doing ~1,000 cycles per day+ anything that hangs up the cycle 5 seconds looses a lot of parts. How fast are the parts catchers? other options for extracting the parts? We have a conveyor on the Citizen that feeds out to a 5 gallon bucket with a strainer.
The Citizen hands off to second spindle and doesn't need the tail stock, so obviously this process will be slower. I'm just wondering if there are any gotchas I'm not thinking of. I'm thinking I can add a probe and measure/offset automatically every 20 parts or so and should be able to run deeper into the night (can only run ~300 parts lights out currently). The bar feeder only being 6 feed means it wouldn't make it through the night, but can get a heck of a lot of parts done overnight. Tolerance is +//0.0008. As the end mill wears it causes deflection in the bar which compounds around the 4 sides so we see a few tenths change in part size over a few hundred parts on our smallest size (5/16" bar becoming 1/4" shank).
Appreciate the input. Looking to sell the Swiss for roughly 1/2 the cost of a new ST20Y dressed out or close to trade for a 2018ish at going rates. Thinking likely go used since it doesn't add cost. Haas would add some new capability for R&D on some other parts too. Frankly the Citizen is just too much of a PITA for me to program so I just don't run anything else on it.
I'm not a lathe guy. The only CNC lathes I've owned were to make our blank tool shanks (old Miyano BND without Y, then Hardinge Swiss I never got working right, now Citizen A20). We are just milling round bars into square blanks 2.5" long and parting off. That's it. Turn a 1/2" round bar into a 3/8" square shank 2.5" long with rounded corners running 3/8" end mill down one side, then the next etc. When I ran these on the Miyano I used a spring loaded live center and it worked great, but didn't have Y axis and had to use the tip of the end mill instead of the side, terrible on tooling.
Getting the ground O1 tool steel bars in time, in each size has become a nightmare. Haven't gotten 5/8" bars since February and the prices have tripled over the last 5 years. Since I have no choice now but to import my own (likely non-ground) bars I could save 50% and not have to send them for grinding just switching from a swiss to a chucker so I can work from oversized non-ground bars. Slower, but saves me 1/3 of the machine cost per year on metal.
On the ST20Y with barfeed it would just be part off, center drill, feed out 2.625", bring in the programable hydraulic tailstock with live center, run and end mill (2 passes per side) at C0,C90,C180,C270, then parts catcher call and part off. Simple... but doing ~1,000 cycles per day+ anything that hangs up the cycle 5 seconds looses a lot of parts. How fast are the parts catchers? other options for extracting the parts? We have a conveyor on the Citizen that feeds out to a 5 gallon bucket with a strainer.
The Citizen hands off to second spindle and doesn't need the tail stock, so obviously this process will be slower. I'm just wondering if there are any gotchas I'm not thinking of. I'm thinking I can add a probe and measure/offset automatically every 20 parts or so and should be able to run deeper into the night (can only run ~300 parts lights out currently). The bar feeder only being 6 feed means it wouldn't make it through the night, but can get a heck of a lot of parts done overnight. Tolerance is +//0.0008. As the end mill wears it causes deflection in the bar which compounds around the 4 sides so we see a few tenths change in part size over a few hundred parts on our smallest size (5/16" bar becoming 1/4" shank).
Appreciate the input. Looking to sell the Swiss for roughly 1/2 the cost of a new ST20Y dressed out or close to trade for a 2018ish at going rates. Thinking likely go used since it doesn't add cost. Haas would add some new capability for R&D on some other parts too. Frankly the Citizen is just too much of a PITA for me to program so I just don't run anything else on it.