Apogee

[will_0000]

Finally got the case off the machine, cleaned debured and onto the cmm for final inspection. Always a little be tense waiting to see the results even though you are pretty sure you hit the numbers while in the machine. It was then a quick drive up to the team waiting for it so it can be built up.



A good end to the week.

 

[wheelieking71]

Finally got the case off the machine, cleaned debured and onto the cmm for final inspection. Always a little be tense waiting to see the results even though you are pretty sure you hit the numbers while in the machine. It was then a quick drive up to the team waiting for it so it can be built up.

View attachment 277161

A good end to the week.

Effing stellar!

 

[will_0000]

Thanks Wheelieking.

The next custom job is to reverse engineer this Arrows A3 steering rack and reproduce all the components for a new one.


A funny one. What happens when the swarf screw motor burns out its winding's and the HMC needs to run for the next three days on a production job? You convert it to be wound by hand, just need a hamster in a wheel to power it continuously.

 

[will_0000]

We are currently roughing out some large diameter aluminium, currently on the second roughing opp that requires a set of internal soft jaws to hold the part. This is one of my pet hates turning large diameter soft jaws and the large interrupted cut. 10" chuck on our QT20N, it just always sounds horrible and I feel for the poor machine. Currently running at 50SFM and 1.0DOC and 0.12mm/rev. Does anyone have a better way of doing this or a way of reducing the battering the machine takes. The part has full pie jaws in the next opp but their is no need at this rouging stage.

 

[dkmc]

Currently running at 50SFM and 1.0DOC and 0.12mm/rev. Does anyone have a better way of doing this or a way of reducing the battering the machine takes. The part has full pie jaws in the next opp but their is no need at this rouging stage.

I can tell you from a job years back involving 7" square steel stock, needing to turn it to 4" round for a length of 8" on a manual lathe.....
Faster speed with moderate cut depth (.200 not 1.0) and very slow feed (.001-.0015 per rev) was the only way to not beat the snot out of
the machine. More like a milling operation with the interrupted cuts. I'd say you are way to slow and too deep DOC.
My .02....

 

[wheelieking71]

We are currently roughing out some large diameter aluminium, currently on the second roughing opp that requires a set of internal soft jaws to hold the part. This is one of my pet hates turning large diameter soft jaws and the large interrupted cut. 10" chuck on our QT20N, it just always sounds horrible and I feel for the poor machine. Currently running at 50SFM and 1.0DOC and 0.12mm/rev. Does anyone have a better way of doing this or a way of reducing the battering the machine takes. The part has full pie jaws in the next opp but their is no need at this rouging stage.
View attachment 278273

Go faster, if you have a good insert for the interrupted cut. Yea, that is no fun.

EDIT: dkmc beat me to it, LOL

 

[cnctoolcat]

Sometimes I will rough-cut the chuck jaws in the mill (one at a time), to remove most of the stock.

Then re-mount in the lathe for finishing.

Also, use a left-handed turning tool (insert “up”) for interrupted and heavy OD turning. This drives the cutting forces into your turret and bed, rather than trying to lift the turret off the bed!

ToolCat

 

[will_0000]

Thanks for the suggestions, I have tried running it faster but I just end up with destroyed inserts even though they are ones for interrupted cuts but I haven't reduced the DOC to 0.2 Running the tool upside down completely left my mind. I'll give them a go.

 

[Garwood]

The guy I bought my first big CNC lathe from told me to turn in the direction that "lifted" the turrets. I couldn't make it work for shit. I bought opposite hand tools and spun things the other way and it worked great. Turned out I was really getting after some steel parts and he did much lighter work with it.

 

[Matt_Maguire]

I’m with the jack the speed up club.

When you have full pie jaws normal surface speeds work OK. When we had jaws like in the pic, then the RPMs got REALLY bumped up to 1200sfpm or more. Sometimes we wondered if the chuck would like the speeds we did it at… When it’s right the cut just goes BRRR.

The boring bars were short 2-3”dia & inserts were TNMG642 or 643 usually.

Good luck,
Matt

 

[will_0000]

Thanks for the suggestions, it did improve the results. Well what a weird time we are operating in. In 14 years of business we have never really been quite or slow and now we are looking at wrapping up the outstanding work in 4-6 weeks time if we limit the days hours. All our Motorsport activities are currently on hold due to event cancellations, the price has fallen out of the oil and gas sector. No enquirers for a week and a half when they would normally be daily. The lucky thing about the whole situation is that our last finance payment on equipment goes out in May and we were just looking at a second hand Mazak Multi tasking machine. Not going to happen now.
Looks like plenty of time to clean and improve the workshop, fix some of the outstanding issues on machines maybe even pull the Mazak QT20N that is buried in storage and start thinking about rebuilding it to join the other one I have.
Hope the rest of you are doing ok.

 

[will_0000]

Well it certainly has been a few odd weeks running out the over spill, just a couple of machines running on some UAV work. the upside is I get to look at all those maintenance items that get pushed away.
Today was tool changer day on the VTC. It has been leaking air and been a bit jerky on operation so off comes all the covers, strip the air ram out drives the the whole body under the spindle and rebuild it with new pipping then deiced to pull all the grippers and springs out and give the whole thing a good de-swarf and clean out.



A nice little roller cam drives the indexing.

 

[Ox]

I'm not seeing how that barrel cam werks?


-----------------

Think Snow Eh!
Ox

 

[will_0000]

The last year has been nothing but weird, stupidly busy for periods and not able to do anything else. The last six months had a rather unexpected twist, The landlords on one of our units would not renew the lease which meant all our fabrication side of the business had to be moved by the start of August. That meant the the laser, CMM and Big VTL all had to move with each one around 20 tonnes on their own. The laser and VTL are both four day strip downs for transport. We have been on two sites for six years due to lack of available space, so it has been a question of finding space to store the machinery until we can find a another building, the laser has been loaned to a company we know to help with the production, the CMM and VTL we manged to cram into the units with all our milling and turning but they cannot be run at the moment due to lack of space and head height.

Laser, CMM and VLT being pulled out.

 

[will_0000]

Trying to fit the VTL through a door that isn't bigger enough.


When the first attempt doesn't work, take out the door post and cladding, then it will fit.

 

[will_0000]

On a better note, we have been machining these Porsche master cylinders and brackets.

 

[wheelieking71]

On a better note, we have been machining these Porsche master cylinders and brackets.

Safe to assume this is aftermarket stuff? Looks fantastic!

 

[will_0000]

Thanks, yes and no, original spec but the manufacture is either no longer supplying them or has gone out of business. We do a lot of this type of reverse engineering of original components. These are from an 80's Le mans car.

Another part recently done are these front and rear main wheel bearing seals for an 1989 Arrows A11, 4 part construction, outer, inner, PTFE seal, Rubber compression washer all swagged together. The original manufacture was Dowety, we have the order codes and everything but nobody seems interested or wanted to manufacture them so we stripped one apart and remade them.

Original


New

 

[will_0000]

Over a year ago I found a SMW 314 hydraulic steady rest from a dealer, always wanted one in a machine but found ways of doing the job with out one until now, currently machine 9" diameter parts upto 600mm long that need the bores machined out. finally been forced to fit the steady.

Cut and welded up this big fabrication.


A bit of machining on the horizontal.




Fitted bronze wear pads to avoid damage on the tailstock box ways.

 

[will_0000]

After a bit of fettling on the pads I got it within 0.02mm on the X axis.



Hydraulic supply has been tapped off the main hydraulic tank. All fitted, powered up with one of the parts.


I still have a lot to do to finish it off. Pressure regulator, solenoid and manifold are all on their way, the plan is to fit a switch next to the tailstock switches on the control panel. I am going to machine new swarf covers to provide a coolant wash over the rollers and even see if I can find any auxiliary contacts in the cabinet to activate via an M code.

I need to decide where to put the manifold and valves. either on the tailstock assembly with protective covers or in the machine body?