That Mori is making me . They are a real nice piece of iron.

I did mostly real big odd shaped work. We ran it without the front and side tin most of the time. The doors mounted on independent rails so they could go on and keep most of the coolant off the floor. We were running stainless so we were not slinging the coolant very far.

Do they still have the ceramic spindle taper? Ours did and it keeps the tool holders looking brand new for ever. No Fretting.

Very Nice

Glacern, I'm jealous! What model Mori is that?

Just bid a project the other day ~$3M at today's prices, but delivery is slated for Summer 2010...like we can hold pricing on a T316 stainless job .
Anyway, quote is only good for 30 days. The Toyoda is too small...plenty of capacity and umph, just way short on X travel.

So, if the project breaks favorably with us,do we fight repositioning a bunch of parts (tolerances are wide open so it's not a problem) or do we step up for a new toy? As far as required tolerance, rigidity, etc, a "entry level" machine will get the job done fine, just don't really like the idea of dropping $200-250k on a disposable machine. Anyone know an order of magnitude on the cost of a new monster Mori, Mazak or?

Steve

That's the MV-653. We got the Big Plus spindle, no ceramic.

Steve, how much X-travel do you need? The Mori MV-1003 (95") and VS10000 (80" or 120") start around 500k I believe. We've got some monster work planned ahead as well, though we'll probably end up going with a much larger bridge mill or an HBM.

You could just build a "shuttle" if you have enough room under the part yet.

I had a job a cpl yrs ago that I needed 2 machines with more X travel than the two that I had sitting w/nothing to doo.

I buitl a pr of shuttle tables for them. Now mine were fairly light duty for what you up against I am sure, but the concept would be the same.

On mine I used a set of linear rails and a pr of 2" air cyls with adj hard stops at each end.

You could easilly enough make another "X axis" to set on top of yours with a ball screw and an outboard controller driven simply off of an aux M code - just like a 1/2 axis rotary table. (See the used controler thread for something that would werk here.)

Just throwin that out there....


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Think Snow Eh!
Ox

I think with the dollar valuation around the world, oil and powergen costs (or from the supply side - profits) driving replacement and new projects, has caused us to see the size of projects inching up ("footing up" doesn't sound right...). The aforementioned project would put us in a 10' X machine...I've seen what some of the "other" guys have... IR bridge mills...I think 8' x 20' with 4 heads.

When you start getting to the half-mil arena, do your options increase or actually decrease?

Steve

The MV-653 list price is about $335k I think.....the MV-1003 lists out about $560k... when you get into 10' x travel... you are not going to find that in a Sharp.....

Ox, GREAT idea...these long parts usually only need lots of drilling and threading...maybe a big chamfer, but pretty easy to hold, and not tight toleranced. I have run with your idea and sketched up a way to do this easily and should hold up just fine for the tasks required....but I really wanted to spend a half-mil. .

Thanks, Steve

I'm sorry, I'll keep my mouth shut next time.

(Well, prolly not - but ..... )


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Out of my brain on the 5:15!
Ox

Im new here and still learning my way around CNC machines. I recently got out of college for a millwright so keep that in mind.

At the Fab Shop I work at we recently got 2 brand new Toyoda mills, A FV1365 and a FV1680. The 1365 replaced a BM1200 we had that was in my opinion a lemon. about 8 months after we got it the top spindle bearing locked up, We believe this was do to a faulty fitting that blew on the top that was for the through spindle coolant. The coolant that it sprayed found its way into the head so we had to drain all the oil out of the head and replace a few times to clean it out so it was not milky. We also had the Z Axis coupling slip a few times so we had to reset where home was.

So far we have only had the 1365 and 1680 for a few weeks but are having a few problems not being able to rapid down with the manual control and a problem with the rigid tap cycle. Fanuc is sending a guy here tomorrow to look at it an show us how to fix it.

In my experience Toyoda has been more than happy to help you if there is a problem. Also Hales Machine (guys we bought our CNC's through) has also been a HUGE help. The books they send with them are rather easy to read, heck of allot better than the Korean made HNK mill we have that only has a Korean manual.

If you get a BM or FV series tho check the coolant line that goes into the spindle above the clamp/unclamp cylinder, these have been known to work there way loose and soak everything up top with coolant along with contaminating the oil in the head.

We've just installed a new Toyoda FV-1680. I can say it's a defenite improvement over the previous version. The casting is pretty similar to the Awea but they made nice improvements on details... really.

See couple of them:

- Redesigned head gear box, handle more torque.
- Hand scraped spindle nose.
- Hand scraped Ball Screw end support.
- Bigger coolant thru unit, level & temp monitored.
- More open viewing area.
- A lot better cable management around the machine, the install is neat.
- All over better finish.

If I have a chance, I'll post some pictures

Charles