Cycle Time

Is there any software that will be accurate on parts cycle time? I program with Mcamx now and while most of the cycle time on parts is accurate, when it comes to jobs with a lot of drilling, its total run time is very in accurate. It is making it hard to price certain jobs and operation options in the shop.
Is there any software that is better to determine total run times for parts to better quote jobs?

Anthony Cerrito said:

Is there any software that will be accurate on parts cycle time? I program with Mcamx now and while most of the cycle time on parts is accurate, when it comes to jobs with a lot of drilling, its total run time is very in accurate. It is making it hard to price certain jobs and operation options in the shop.
Is there any software that is better to determine total run times for parts to better quote jobs?

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i usually use a pencil and paper. i record time i start job and i record time i completed job. setup time, measuring, deburring, recuts, cleanup it all adds time. i seen many a job where the "little things" took longer to do than the actual machining time.
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using Excel software of course i can also record times of the last few times a job was run and have excel calculate average time in a millisecond. excel average time of last 10 times a part was run with the longest and shortest times and if you record why the longer times it can be useful to troubleshoot why the longer times were needed. for example if something needs recutting 3 out of 4 times and a extra finish pass taking 10 minutes saves measuring twice and manually recutting taking a hour math says it is worth the program change of increased 10 minutes over the increased hour it was taking before
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CAM software is not going to know if you need extra finish passes to hold a tolerance or CAM software is not going to mention increased setup times with a particular setup

The cycle time calculation in Esprit is very accurate. What isn't accurate is drilling. Though let me explain why, it may help solve your issue. Both of the machines i run i set the clearance height after retract to .005" Esprit by default uses .100 clearance height after retract. Cycle times i quote based on CAM cycle time are always faster.You may look into how your programs are setup versus how your software is calculating the drill times to see if it's just a simple parameter that needs changed. This could also be the inverse where maybe the machines have a large clearance height parameter in them and your software isn't using one.

Speedy2222 said:

The cycle time calculation in Esprit is very accurate. What isn't accurate is drilling. Though let me explain why, it may help solve your issue. Both of the machines i run i set the clearance height after retract to .005" Esprit by default uses .100 clearance height after retract. Cycle times i quote based on CAM cycle time are always faster.You may look into how your programs are setup versus how your software is calculating the drill times to see if it's just a simple parameter that needs changed. This could also be the inverse where maybe the machines have a large clearance height parameter in them and your software isn't using one.

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i use a Mazak where default tool retract clearance is 2.0" inches or more but at 800 ipm rapids it is a blink of a eye. my experience is if you break a drill bit that eats up hugh amounts of time recovering.
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i have often timed a reduced slower feed taking 2 seconds longer per hole and 5 minutes longer per part but part average time was actually hours faster cause broken tools were causing extreme delays.
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CAM software does not predict broken tool recovery times

dmf_tomb said:

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I usually use a pencil and paper. I record time i start job and i record time i completed job. Setup time, measuring, deburring, recuts, cleanup it all adds time. I seen many a job where the "little things" took longer to do than the actual machining time.
.
Using excel software of course i can also record times of the last few times a job was run and have excel calculate average time in a millisecond. Excel average time of last 10 times a part was run with the longest and shortest times and if you record why the longer times it can be useful to troubleshoot why the longer times were needed. For example if something needs recutting 3 out of 4 times and a extra finish pass taking 10 minutes saves measuring twice and manually recutting taking a hour math says it is worth the program change of increased 10 minutes over the increased hour it was taking before
.
Cam software is not going to know if you need extra finish passes to hold a tolerance or cam software is not going to mention increased setup times with a particular setup

Click to expand...

dmf_tomb said:

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I use a mazak where default tool retract clearance is 2.0" inches or more but at 800 ipm rapids it is a blink of a eye. My experience is if you break a drill bit that eats up hugh amounts of time recovering.
.
I have often timed a reduced slower feed taking 2 seconds longer per hole and 5 minutes longer per part but part average time was actually hours faster cause broken tools were causing extreme delays.
.
Cam software does not predict broken tool recovery times

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the derailleur strikes again

ignore Tom's excel files!

Ok, back on topic. I don't know of a program that will calculate exact cycle times, maybe Vericut once it is setup with your machine parameters. Mastercam does not calculate the machines accel/decel, and it also does not account for actual drilling. If you pay attention to what MCX says and actual machine time, you should be able to come up with some kind of factor to use along with the backplot numbers. How close are you trying to get, within minutes, or seconds??

rlockwood said:

the derailleur strikes again

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The Ignore list is a great thing


I really have no Idea what's going through that guys head?????


HAPPY THANKSGIVING EVERYONE!

Mike1974 said:

Ok, back on topic. I don't know of a program that will calculate exact cycle times, maybe Vericut once it is setup with your machine parameters. Mastercam does not calculate the machines accel/decel, and it also does not account for actual drilling. If you pay attention to what MCX says and actual machine time, you should be able to come up with some kind of factor to use along with the backplot numbers. How close are you trying to get, within minutes, or seconds??

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I use MC also, and have dicked around with about every Machine Def setting. It's never gonna happen. Mine is somewhere around 30-40% off lol

I have found HSMXpress and Fusion 360 to actually come out within 10% of true cycle time, drilling and all, and actually the programs run faster than estimated on both our Haas and Fadal. Now that's not considering that I don't do a lot of holes per part, but I've been impressed with the cycle time estimates so far.

Thanks, the drilling on these jobs is whats throwing my guys off. they are quoting hours less than actually run time because they were using old programs from mastercam. Once I found out I knew that where my problem was. I will tackle it some more come monday. Happy Thanksgiving everyone and thanks.

What are you drilling and sounds like you need solid carbide drills and shrink fit holders than start drilling holes for keeps
Don nelson

my point is some software often does not account for significant time taken to make a part.
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if you ignore tool setup times, tool changing times, broken tool recovery times, clearing / cleaning long chips wrapped around a drill times, rapid moves or non cutting move times, etc then program run estimates will be off.
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use what ever software you want but if it ignores things that are causing significant delays it will never be accurate. might want to start to list what is taking time that makes the CAM program time estimates so inaccurate

A good excel setup will get you there, to near-perfect estimation.

See someone local to help you get one.
It does not take long to do a proper time study, once the excel is setup properly.

I am sorry, I cannot give you a copy of mine.
It is not my original IP, and someone spent $$ to make it.
I respect past confidences, a lot.

I hear excel can even estimate, to a 99% accuracy of probability of when you will break a tool. It can also tell you what tooling you will need to recover from the said broken tool.

The only thing I don't think it can predict is my wife, maybe I should start documenting each experience I have with my wife in excel and it will adapt into this area of expertise as well.

Most versitle excel is.

ESPRIT is what we use and recommend

mixed123 said:

ESPRIT is what we use and recommend

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This is quite the low-information post. WHY and HOW does it relate to the topic?

It's spam. Here's got 8 posts and they are all spam.

mTeryk said:

It's spam. Here's got 8 posts and they are all spam.

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Yeah, I realized that after I posted. I also reported the jerkass.

I haven't actually bought it and used it a bunch yet, but I did a two week trial of NCPlot, which was at least fairly accurate. You can put in your work coordiantes, so travelling between fixture stations and how far to tool change position can be accounted for. It could also handle sub programs. It seemed pretty neat, and I liked it. I'll probably pick it up at some point. It was nice having something to give accurate cycle times so I could play around with different things on a part that is running to try and speed things up. Having an accurate simulator would make it a lot easier to justify buying better tooling for a job or not.

I think no matter what the software is though M codes are going to affect somewhat the cycle time differences between computer and machine. How long fot the spindle to ramp up/stop, B axis clamp/unclamp/, etc. But, yes, an accurate time of machine movements would be nice. Peck drilling definitely affects the cycle time calculations a bit between CAM and reality. Also in MCAM, I don't know if they fixed it yet, but in X7 still the helical boring times are always shown at half of what they are actually.

Doesn't answer the simultion part of your question, but I will go a little OT and say for jobs with lots of drilling - Why don't you have HP drills that don't need to peck in the machine? Good drills are one of the easiest ways to speed up machining a part.

And for quoting purposes, the way I approach it matters a lot on quantity. Big volume needs an accurate cycle time estimation, tooling costs, etc. Onesey twosey...not so much. A guy told me years ago when quoting the onesey twosey "You know how to machine. Just look at the print and ask yourself 'How long it will me to make it?' Write the number down and move on."

I've used Predator Editor for many years now as it came bundled with my CAM software. After diving into all the little nuances of it I now get cycle times with far less than the 5-10% deviation I'm hearing here, including when drilling a lot of holes (which is where most "Verify" programs get it wrong). Yes, it even does accel/decel but unless you are doing a ton of repositioning moves it doesn't make a great amount of difference, just another tool to tweak you in.

When a 3+ hour job completes within a few minutes of when it's supposed to, you feel like you are doing something right. Pay attention to rapids and tool change times if your Estimator allows. Also, most CAM programs allow you to post as Canned Cycles or separate moves. If drilling a lot of holes and time estimation is important, it is super easy to change to separate moves and backplot that instead just for time estimation.