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Makino KE-55 mill- There exist a moving quill version with English control ? (video)

Milacron

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As per video below. Every moving quill KE I've seen has Japanese characters only, so curious if any country imported a moving quill KE with English control ? Why were they limited to Japan and Singapore ?


Fascinating that it looks pristine and yet there is some noise as X and Y axis move about. My KE-55 is absolute silence at those speeds...wonder if the heavier head makes a difference in that regard ? Also interesting is there seems to be no Fanuc G code side to the control...seems to be "J" conversational only.

It appears the one disadvantage of the moving quill version is lack of pushbutton pneumatic drawbar (to hold CAT and BT40 pull stud tooling) Which is curious since it is possible to have both moving quill and pull stud drawbar...Maho and Deckel managed it.
 
I have no answer to your question, but you seems to be very impressed with your machine. And it is true , I believe the Japanese are at this moment the builders of the finest machines. (Okuma, Yasda, Mori-seiki, Mazak , Makino etc did I forget any?)
But when I compare the KE-55 to my old 600C, for me it would be a step back. No TC, no rotating axis, open machine (chips and coolant flying everywere, I hate that), and appearently no quill. A lot of odd work I can't do on the Makino.That means for me, beside it's silk running, no improvement. So why is the KE-55 so attractive for you?
 
But when I compare the KE-55 to my old 600C, for me it would be a step back. No TC, no rotating axis, open machine (chips and coolant flying everywere, I hate that), and appearently no quill. A lot of odd work I can't do on the Makino.That means for me, beside it's silk running, no improvement. So why is the KE-55 so attractive for you?
I've mentioned before that the KE-55 is nowhere near as versatile as a Deckel or Maho, for reasons you state....but I
I've come to realize it's other charms are just soooooo nice, the versatility aspects I find work arounds. Not just the silky silence of everything but the Fanuc control ease of service and parts (which I haven't needed yet, but when I do a whole 'nuther world than Deckel D11 in that regard) , plus the amazingly logical conversational side of the control. You almost don't need a manual to figure it out. (unlike a Romi M17 lathe with Fanuc control for example which has all sorts of special quirks on the conversational side you need the manual to figure out)

Re open machine, there is a sheet of plexiglass that fits in slots of the side guarding, so it's not completely open if you use that front cover. Re the lack of moving quill, since the Z handwheel is moving an encoder it is basically effortless to raise the Z axis manually for drilling or whatever. The downside is you don't have "feel" for smaller drills and have to watch the chips carefully...so a moving manual quill would be nice...which is why I posted the video.

Bottom line is the ideal would be to have both... the Makino and your Maho. I suspect you'd end up using the Makino more often than the Maho unless you are always machining in horizontal or 4th axis modes.
 
This machine reminds me a bit of a Hamai mill that I saw at a dealers a few years ago, this had Z axis on the knee ,a conventional x axis on the table Y axis on the ram , a single swivel on the head, turret mill type drive on the head ( or at least it looked like one) and a manual quill.

The control was a Fanuc OM with the full alphabet keyboard and was loaded with lots of custom macros. I think there was a glass scale system on it.The machine was built in 1990 I think.

I haven't heard of another other than when watching an article about Japanese manufacturing on TV and they visited a shop where a similer machine was in use , It was interesting in that this small shop was on the ground floor at street level then the guy and his family lived above the shop which is apparently not unusuall in Japanese cities.

Sorry to derail your thread Milacron but I wondered if you have come accross these Hamai mills in the US.

sable
 
Sorry to derail your thread Milacron but I wondered if you have come accross these Hamai mills in the US.
Do you mean this one ? If so, no, never seen a single one in the US....but I have the brochure on one I picked up at a US trade show. So apparently someone here was trying to sell them....but far as I know, never actually sold one.

Having the Fanuc OM control it's highly unlikely to have the nice conversational side like the Makino KE-55 however. Probably more like a Makino RMC-55 from a control standpoint. Still, one wonders if perhaps Hamai produced a nicer control in later years that I am unaware of.

Hamai2.jpg


Also notice the spindle motor is just a standard 3 phase motor...so, unlike the Makino, no programmable speeds, no rigid tapping, no ultra quiet* running. And no power drawbar...at least not a pull stud type. Notice X axis is via conventional knee slide. So while this is an impressive looking machine, I still say the Makino KE-55 is infinitely better.

*The non moving quill KE-55...in average shop, you cannot hear the spindle turn up to about 1,000 RPM. The first time I started mine up had no tool in and I thought the spindle wasn't working until I took a good look at it !

http://www.practicalmachinist.com/v...ene-mills/another-japanese-deckel-cnc-109465/
 
Yeah ,that's near enough the same machine, the one I saw had more buttons and the control pendant hung from above instead of being supported from below.

It had an ordinary ,rather small looking motor(no programable spindle) and no power drawbar which is what put me off, I sometimes regret not buying it as it was immaculate and top quality.
 
Yeah ,that's near enough the same machine, the one I saw had more buttons and the control pendant hung from above instead of being supported from below.

It had an ordinary ,rather small looking motor(no programable spindle) and no power drawbar which is what put me off, I sometimes regret not buying it as it was immaculate and top quality.
Without knowing the price I don't know whether to be "wistful" or not as to your not getting it ;) If you regret not buying it in spite of it's shortcomings I presume it must have been pretty low price, eh ?
 
Also interesting is there seems to be no Fanuc G code side to the control...seems to be "J" conversational only.
Thinking that maybe in Singapore they combined the J and G code into one box before the advent of the later "Professional EN" yesterday I compared the images of this machines control face to my machine and except for Japanese characters they are identical. So, sure enough, this one has no conventional G code programming capability....most curious.

Below is a video that shows the swing out G code side of the control that my machine has. It is a separate box that can be rotated and locked to the front or folded back out of the way. But even folded back it's still obvious from the front view and on the moving quill machine it simply isn't there.

 
Without knowing the price I don't know whether to be "wistful" or not as to your not getting it ;) If you regret not buying it in spite of it's shortcomings I presume it must have been pretty low price, eh ?

It was a fair dealers price at about £4500 IIRC I was tempted by it because I am used to Fanuc model O controls and I saw it as a potential replacement for my Prototrak Bridgeport clone(which I have owned from new) ,the Hamai was a fair bit bigger than the Prototrak but in some ways not as versatile in that you couldn't swing the head around which is something I regularly do, I don't think the actual travels were much different. In the end I decided the swap would be one I might regret, but of course I could easily have found another Prototrak but I don't expect to see another Hamai which as long as it was reliable would have been a much better machine I am sure.
 
It was a fair dealers price at about £4500 IIRC I was tempted by it because I am used to Fanuc model O controls and I saw it as a potential replacement for my Prototrak Bridgeport clone(which I have owned from new) ,the Hamai was a fair bit bigger than the Prototrak but in some ways not as versatile in that you couldn't swing the head around which is something I regularly do, I don't think the actual travels were much different. In the end I decided the swap would be one I might regret, but of course I could easily have found another Prototrak but I don't expect to see another Hamai which as long as it was reliable would have been a much better machine I am sure.

Here's the newest Hamai I could find a photo of. Seems to have power drawbar but still no programmable motor for spindle. The 4 handwheels are curious...perhaps for optional rotary table but would think a manual rotary table a bit silly for a CNC mill.

th
 
I've been thinking about the handwheels and I don't think the one I saw had any ,I'm fairly certain it had a wander pendant and I remember that the quill had a dial indicator to re set the quill after using it manually which the one above does not have. I wonder if the extra handwheel is for the quill ,sounds daft I know but I can't see a fine feed on the head like on your brochure ,it would be mechanically complicated but of course the handles could well be electronic.
 
I wonder if the extra handwheel is for the quill ,sounds daft I know but I can't see a fine feed on the head like on your brochure ,it would be mechanically complicated but of course the handles could well be electronic.
I thought about that but it would be daft indeed seeing as you could raise the Z effortlessly and would have no "feel" lowering the quill the same way, so what would be the point ? Unless you can tilt the head....which it just might do...hard to tell.
 
Looks like a nice machine - unless they're into repaint rebuilds too, it's available for the equivalent of 35k US.:crazy:

Different noise may be down to different motor installed in the moving quill version?

I believe the control was available in English from Fanuc, whether Makino have done some customizing there is the question??

http://www.t-mt.com/kousaku/
img/23288/23288.pdf


There's old Hamai mills over here too, only ever seen conventional VMCs though, nothing with the handles.
 
I believe the control was available in English from Fanuc, whether Makino have done some customizing there is the question??

http://www.t-mt.com/kousaku/
img/23288/23288.pdf
Control was Fanuc 20F so yes it was available in English but was the KEV version ever offered with English conversational programming and English keypads is the real question. Fascinating to see that brochure, thanks. But now I wonder what the "A" version was all about ? (KEVA-55)
 








 
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