Brother R650X1 Z spindle/table distance

Again, just like my last thread, I searched........
Figured this was a good enough question to warrant its own discussion.
You guys with R650's, How do you deal with the tall Z relationship?
The spec. I see (which was kindly pointed out to me today by the Yamazen guy) is 9.8"
I interpret this as that is as close as the spindle will get to the table. Correct? That is pretty high.
So, if doing vise-work, with your typical 3" tall vise-bed, and short as possible tools, how do you reach your parts?!
Am I missing something here? Do all vises need a 5" riser under them?

I have seen shops typically run a 3" sub plate under vises on the R650. Top of the jaws is about 5" plus the 3" sub plate, so a 1.8" tool can reach the top of the jaws.

I went with 1" subplate and 4" vise risers. I wanted to be able to reach the vise bed with short tools for use with vise mounted pallet fixtures. I like the setup so far.

Message sent Matt

There is another guy on the forum here with one of those and a gaggle of Okumas. He has a hydraulic or vacuum operated sub-pallet system. This, plus vises, makes up the space. Brother has always had a big min Z, 7.87 on the older machines. They designed them to hold big part-holding fixtures for high production work (sewing machines). You could put a couple of Pearson bases on it and add some vise sub-pallets.

They are designed that way for versatility. If the dead zone is shorter, you limit the flexibility of parts you can run through the machine. I have seen some incredibly large work pieces made on this model.

You can design your sub-plate to allow other tooling such as rotaries, side spindles and tailstock to be mounted partially or totally out of the machine travel. The pallet machines have a circular jig area to work within. This set up is on a 450, the 650 is similar.

wheelieking71 said:

Message sent Matt

Click to expand...

Can't attached pictures in PM's, so I'm just going to reply here.

Here's the base of it all: All double disc ground, doweled to the table and to the risers. I bought a long ER16 holder specifically to reach the vise risers so I could dust them off. Between both pallets, I ended up taking .0015" off at the worst to get them all perfect (not shown).



That setup with two Orange 17.5" doubles weighs roughly 330 pounds, so I believe four vises no matter the configuration, will go over the max 400 pound-per-pallet rating. But there's a setting to limit the pallet rotation speed when you go over that weight. And really, this thing is so fucking fast man, you probably won't ever notice the time difference. I mean, if it doubles the pallet change time, that's about 7 seconds total. If you do 100 cycles per day that's just shy of 6 minutes lost. If four vises gain you 10 minutes over two vises, there you go.

However, if the only reason you want four vises on each pallet is to get more parts on the table at a time, this thing is so fucking fast that I urge you to consider two vises instead. I'll give you an example why: Most of my programs use local sub routines. The Brother control, although I like it very much, is pretty much 180º to the Haas control in the way it functions, and there's a lot of program structure that needs to be changed. So the first job we ran ended up doing this every time I changed work offsets:
- Home the Z
- Stop spindle from 16k, coolant off
- Position X and Y
- Start spindle to 16k, coolant on
- Rapid to clearance plane

That process happened 12 unnecessary times in that program. Being the anal moron I am, I had to get rid of those extra moves. So again, picture that entire process happening 12 times, seems like a lot of time wasted, right? When fixed, the program ran a whopping 9 seconds faster. It doesn't even make sense... .75 seconds for all that? That's what the timers said.

Got off topic there. So yeah, the Z is weird. It gets even more weird when you do a G100 tool change to your fancy spindle probe (you did get probing, right???) and watch the pallet bulkhead wiz by the probe tip at mach 8.2. I haven't had to worry about it, but over a certain tool length I'm sure you can't use G100 tool change anymore if that tool is the first to run. Otherwise the bulkhead will hit the tool as the pallet is rotating in.

EDIT: The one thing that really caught me off gaurd is the clearances on these vises. All I thought about was keeping everything inside the max fixture area I think they call it. Well, when you are using a double vise and only using the near station, the screw gets pushed out and can get REALLY close to a bunch of shit, to include the loading station door (which I've already ripped off the machine once), the non-moving bulkhead (which we've already busted up) and the Y axis way cover inside the machining area. To solve these issues once and for all, I made a vise cradle with contact switches which is wired to the machine. If either of the wrench vises are not in their home, the machine alarms when it tries to rotate the pallet. Yamazen was a massive help with this. And I'm going to put a window in the enclosure, to the right of the control so you can see the pallet rotate from all sides during a setup.

And one last thing, don't hesitate to ask dumb questions of Yamazen, now or after the install. If they put up with the shit I asked of them, then they will put up with anything.

I need more than 2 vises on the table because I can not have a guy tied to the machine.
I need enough cycle time that one guy can tend to 2 or 3 machines. I need 3 vises minimum.
I am sure only having 2 vises will defeat the purpose of having a lightning fast machine. As it will constantly be waiting for somebody to tend to it.
Which has been my argument against getting a Brother for two years now. All these complications are talking me right out of it actually.

You cant just use some mitebite fixtures for the operations on the machine? Build a plate and hold as many parts as 4 vises would get you and save the money you would have spent on vises.

Gotcha. Personally I think this is not the machine for you then. Even if you had 4 vises on the table, the changeover takes longer because of it and since the machine is working while you're changing over, I think the amount of free time to tend other machines will be limited no matter what. Obviously the type of parts and complexity of changeover will have a massive impact on that.

But you're right. My operator is very fast, but there is no way in hell he could tend another machine in general. Not with the parts we generally make. For us it works fine though, because the clamping procedures are extremely critical and different for most parts, so going from machine to machine would just cause mistakes.

dstryr said:

You cant just use some mitebite fixtures for the operations on the machine? Build a plate and hold as many parts as 4 vises would get you and save the money you would have spent on vises.

Click to expand...

Agreed. Even on an older/slower Robodrill, vises are inefficient workholding if you're doing short cycle time parts and you don't want to be standing in front of the damn thing tending it. If you're going with Orange Vises, the key is to use the pallets with MiteeBite fixtures and get as many parts on the table as you can.

In many ways, this is the anathema to the lean single piece flow strategy these machines are very much intended for, but unless you've got near free labor (China) or are willing to invest in automation (tricky for small parts, gets $$$), your best bet is to use high-density fixtures to get the benefits of a significantly reduced per-piece cycle time down while getting the total cycle time to a place where you're free to be tending other machines.

The nice thing about going with the Orange pallet route is that you get tremendous flexibility. It can go from being a 16x8x2 pallet carrier to being a dual station vise to a large capacity single station in a few minutes. About the only downside is that the Orange pallets aren't exactly quick swap affairs, but that's not so relevant on a machine with a pallet changer.

I wish I could post up pics/details of the parts, and let you guys bounce ideas off me. But, I can't.
I disagree that vises are "inefficient work-holding". In a manual clamping situation, I strongly disagree with that as a matter of fact.
How could you possibly beat 1/4 turn of a vise handle to swap out two parts. Short of hydraulics, you can't beat a vise for fast part swaps.

This machines purpose will be for one part. I see at least two years of balls-out production on this part.
The customer and I both hope it runs longer. But, we are banking on two more years. I have already been making them over one year.
A couple details I can share: The part starts out as a very odd/complex custom extrusion. I used to make them from solid bar.
When making from solid bar, the blank starts as 1" thick, 2" wide, 5.750" long. And, finishes at .875" thick, with probably 75% of the blank gone in the form of chips.
I am limited to how close I can nest them because I have to be able to get a 3" slit-saw between them.

Now, I am actually looking at some alternative fixturing for the first operation. Because, we have a pretty bad warpage issue with the extruded blanks.
There is a 1" hole in the extrusion that I intend to grab with an expanding ID clamp. And, I have yet to figure out exactly how To clamp the other end.
I may go hydraulic on this stuff. I have just started to study how this all works (hydraulics).

Matt@RFR said:

Gotcha. Personally I think this is not the machine for you then. Even if you had 4 vises on the table, the changeover takes longer because of it and since the machine is working while you're changing over, I think the amount of free time to tend other machines will be limited no matter what. Obviously the type of parts and complexity of changeover will have a massive impact on that.

But you're right. My operator is very fast, but there is no way in hell he could tend another machine in general. Not with the parts we generally make. For us it works fine though, because the clamping procedures are extremely critical and different for most parts, so going from machine to machine would just cause mistakes.

Click to expand...

If I could find another VF3ss with a pallet changer, as much as I hate that damn machine, I would buy another one in a heart-beat (for this job).
It is working perfectly for this application.
Whatever I get needs to be versatile after this job has run its course though. Or still worth a reasonable amount of money if I have to sell it (which rules another used HAAS out!)

Have you thought about a second shift on the existing VF3?

Another way to look at it, might vary from how you see it. I make pallets fixtures and load them into the vises (450 ,just 1 vise per table right now). If cycle time is short, someone does have to tend the machine - but with a 3 second table rotate cycle time, that's how long the machines isn't cutting. OR - how long it takes to unload, blow ships, and re-load the vise on a traditional VMC. Production/throughput is pretty awesome. The acceleration, tool change time, and tapping speed on these are pretty cool too.
If you need more stuff through a single spindle, with fairly short cycles pr load time, this is a great machine. If you have a long running cycle time with minimal load time, the benefits are not as great.
Even on a 700 though, running a 17-4 job I've had for a long time, I was able to cut a fair bit of time out of it. Old machine, VF-2, 8 parts/hour. New machine, brother 700, 11 parts per hour, and I'm not finished optimizing for this machine yet.

If this increased throughput pays enough more to compensate for the employee to attend it, what's not to like?

YMMV.........

Matt@RFR said:

Have you thought about a second shift on the existing VF3?

Click to expand...

Of course, LOL. It already runs 12-14 hours daily.

eaglemike said:

If this increased throughput pays enough more to compensate for the employee to attend it, what's not to like?

YMMV.........

Click to expand...

That is a discussion for another thread. But, I have a mile long list of "whats not to like".

wheelieking71 said:

I disagree that vises are "inefficient work-holding". In a manual clamping situation, I strongly disagree with that as a matter of fact.
How could you possibly beat 1/4 turn of a vise handle to swap out two parts. Short of hydraulics, you can't beat a vise for fast part swaps.

Click to expand...

Load/unload? I'll totally agree that a dual station vise is pretty damn efficient. You're big concern though, is that you want the low cycle time per part of a Speedio, but you also want to be able to tend your other machines while it runs. The only way you're going to be able to do that is by maximizing the number of parts on the table - and in that regard, vises are inefficient compared to pallets. Given what you said about the dimensions and clearance for the saw, I'm thinking you could load 4-5 parts on a full size Orange vise pallet (or other similar fixture of your choice). That would effectively double the cycle time while keeping the per-part cycle benefits, and let you tend other machines.

While I will concede vises are the most efficient manual clamping/unclamping out there, the MiteeBites can have pneumatic or hydraulic cylinders embedded in the fixture to drive them. You would effectively be getting the best of all worlds in that scenario.

Noodling on it though, have you snooped out automation? Brother now has an integrated robotic loading system tied to the control, and I believe configuring that with a standard Speedio S300 or S500 would you get you at the same base cost of the R650X1.

So many ways to do these things.

We have a customer using Double vises, two double vises a side, 3 1/2 minute cycle and the operator can run two machines. Same customer has another part that is an A and B load on each side of the table, 1 minute 10 second cycle. With that set up the operator can not effectively run two machines with that simple change. It is so close to the same set up but the differences are just enough.

A couple other things. If you are really moving that quickly to and from the machine, buying auto-doors is huge. Letting the machine tell the operator that the machine is ready. Door is open, than you have to feed it.

One more thing. Sometimes (often) I end up arguing for less parts on the table, even when one operator is running two machines. Auto doors and a single Schunk pneumatic vise is incredible ergonomic. One hand to move the part and the second to load it. Especially with auto-door. You end up with better flow and in the end, a more productive operator.

Just what I have learned.