Psycho,
Fully understand and agree but what I was eluding to was machine warm-up regarding miss-matches.
Previous place had 4 HG400's (Hitachi Hori's) and they used to move from cold in 2 ways.
The 1st was the column sloped back slightly when warm, so in clocking a cube in the Y, the clock ran away at the top slightly when warm.
Also, if you finished a floor of a component with a different tool to the sidewall, there would be initial miss-match (say 10 to 20 microns).
When warm all was ok.
I appreciate you can get around miss-matches by finishing the sidewalls and floor with the same tool, but what I was really asking I suppose is do these monster machines suffer more from this because they're physically bigger?
Also, do the colums move on these at all (I've also seen this on a small matsuura 300 when warming up).
Cheers,
Terry

Questions:

What does FMS stand for? (I understand it's some variant on a pallet pool - but whare the actual words that make up the acronym?)

What/who is/are JTEKT?

What/who is/are TMU?

And finally - is a tool matrix/hive/giant-rack-of-tools mean to serve multiple machines? Or is it 300+ tool changer for just 1 machine? (I would think you'd want to share it, and the pallet pool, but....)

Barbter,

I haven't done any real "cavity" work yet on these because of the chip problem so I haven't had to machine in the situation you describe. As for the column growing, I haven't noticed but again, machines are not in full production to even equate any history.

But, for big machines in general.... yes, thermal can be a problem with machine geometry. There are ways to machine around some and even probe them out but again, new generation machines have much better controls, casting design, foundation design, etc to combat this. But, in general, you are correct. Depending on foundation design (how the machine is attached, not necessarily the concrete itself) the motion can be large or next to none. 10 or 20 microns isn't a whole lot for cavity type work so it would be ignored but for precision work, it can certainly make you or break. For note, I do run a warm up program on all large equipment (regardless of spindle speed). It runs through the spindle rpm range and all axes are in motion to come up to "operating temperature". The program is also triggered by timers in the event a machine is idle for extended periods.

Bryan,

TMU stands for "Toyoda Machinery USA". It is the US division of the machine tool company based in Illinois.

JTEKT is the parent company in Japan that TMU reports to. JTEKT also owns Mitsui Seiki and a couple other European brands.

FMS is a "Flexible Manufacturing System". These, unlike pallet pools, are modular by design and can be added to (more machines, more pallets, stacker, more load stations, etc). Below is a picture of my FH8800 FMS system. I think I have pictures of other FMS systems in this thread or my other thread in the Mazak forum.

Tool Hive, Tool Matrix is a single magazine for a single machine. I attached pictures on a post (I think) of a Tool Hive bolted onto one of my Toyodas. It is a 330 tool magazine for one spindle. I have tool hives on most of my large machines and other cell production machines.

Attached Thumbnails

 

Thanks psycho - I've seen a fastems system attached to a pair of DMG duoblocks - saw the owner maybe 18 months later, described it as a huge win. Apparently they load the thing up and it runs unattended over a weekend.... Those machines have 120 or 200 tool mags as well.

Re large tool magazines - so nobody has a large shared tool magazine yet? Isn't the point to have sets of identical tools, to cover all jobs in the work flow, and when the machine's built-in wear measurement system discovers a tool is broken or worn out, switch to another one? But for multi-headed installation, I'd think you'd want to share this tooling inventory. (Just like you want the FMS to feed all the machines...)

(Of course, if you have gangs of people removing chips with scoop shovels and refilling coolant tanks with fire hoses, it kind of doesn't matter... Sigh...)

When I looked around Mazak's manufacturing base her in the UK about 5 years ago, I'm sure they had a row of 3x hori's which shared tools.
I maybe mistaken as I've been to sleep since...

I've seen and run much older systems (built in the 60s and 70s) that had a "shared magazine" set up. Ultimately, you end up with a spindle sitting. The problem with shared tools is often times, both machines might need them at the same time (happens more than you'd think).
I've had the same system just simply be a large tool storage with independantly operating cutters for each spindle. But this a waste a space and would have been far more efficient with seperate magazines for each machine. Not to mention, only 1 robot fed the tools so even in an "isolated" configuration, a spindle still sat waiting on a tool.

Barbter is on the right track. Mazak does have a tool system that can feed multiple machines. I forget what it's called and I wish I had a picture of it. This is a huge modular system. Basically, it's a seperate tool system that's running with a machine's existing tool changer system. So, you still have a Tool Hive but a smaller one. The Robot is a gantry machine with access to rows and rows of tooling that is set up in these small "groups" so to speak (maybe 8-12 tools or something?). The robot feeds these little clusters to each machine magazine that loads them into the Hive.
This system can be as large as you can imagine with 10s of thousands of tools in its library. It can also be built with a Tool Loading stations, Tool Setting stations, Racks for new and set tools, seperate racks for used, worn, broken tooing to be changed, racks for Specialized tools for user purposes, etc, etc.

But this is for a huge scaled operation. Not for the 'job shop' for sure. But smaller systems designed for the smaller shops just don't work well in efficiency. It can't. The only way is to double up on robots (or more), add small mags to the machine, and a well written software logic to manage it..... Better off with a tool hive for each machine....

Got it. So in practice you are just putting a very large ATC on each machine. And then "tooling up" to the tune of hundreds of holders and bits for each machine.

Right... So, one might have a mill with a 20 or 30 tool chain/drum magazine. Even less on some umbrella or turret style ATCs....

I on the other hand have a "bedroom" that can fit 330 tools for a tool magazine on each spindle/machine....

As long as Mrs Psycho is happy

Sphincter activated E-stop? What a wonderful idea. I could definitely see an application or two for that. At 1200 ipm,oh yeah, I'd need that. But the boss would never get it to move, being such a tight a__!

There was a posting some years back of a website (not necessarily on PM but some forum anyway) and splash page for a "Pucker Stop" or Puck stop (something like that). That's where that ass activated e-stop deal comes from. It was funnier than hell and I wish I ran some prints on it. It was set up like a product promo page from a major tool builder... very detailed with specs and everything. The link is no longer active though and I've never seen it since on the web or otherwise. Maybe whoever built that webpage could post it again somewhere... It was a riot!

I saw it too, have looked for it and can't find it. Thought maybe it was a hallucination, it should have prompted copycats.