Speaking of the end line I have a job where I've been thinking of incorporating the "shift amount" but haven't used it before and it's been a while since I have read up on it. Basically it's 1.5" 6016 bar and the parts are 1.388" x .365" discs with with some face profiles. Currently I have been parting off and pulling each part but with the need to run a couple thousand this time and the length to diameter ratio I would think I should be able to do 4-5 parts between pulls.
Since I have never used it before, is there any tips or trick besides what's in the manual to make this a sweet option. If it saves me several pulls, it should cut the cycle time by 10-15 seconds per part.
No tricks really. Shift amount will be part width + cut off width + stock to face off next part. For an example, .365" + .125"cut off + .020" would be a shift amount of .510" so next part has .020" to clean up face of next part.
Good idea to make sure your chuck barriers are set correctly in case you miscalculate the number of parts. Entering 10 parts into loop may crash into the chuck and the chuck barrier will prevent it from happening. Also, do NOT enter a 1 for continue, otherwise program will just loop itself infinitely, but advance .510" each part and crash into the chuck.
Repeat number of times is actually the
total times the program is run. Repeat 4 times will give you 4 parts then stop.
The Z values on the screen will advance toward the chuck on the second part. Trace screen will show second part being made to the left of the part geometry and so forth. Hitting 'reset' button will reset Z0 back to start of original program.
Again, chuck barriers are a REAL NICE thing to use when machining stuff in hard jaws, but are a PITA when working with soft jaws. Whenever I am running the hard jaws, the only thing I need to do to 'turn them on' is to enter the jaw number and Z chuck offset in the PROGRAM FILE page for the current program I am using. Because I am using the same hard jaws everytime, I can simply enter the same data in the fields (chuck jaw 1, Z chuck offset -1.2) and this gives me about .100" of cushion to keep tools from smacking the jaws if I do something stupid.
Each machine will be different, so you will need to enter in the data based on your machine. The jaw shape is set in it's own page and you can create multiple entries, then the corresponding jaw number is used when choosing the jaw in the program file page.