Good morning everyone,
This is a two part question but I'm hoping there will be some good input even if everything isn't magically resolved.
Working at a business that has been growing year over year and essentially needs to double production capacity overnight. Looking into adding a robot and/or dual spindle lathe to reduce ops and run afterhours. This means double the amount of chips in an ever shrinking facility.
I've been researching briquetting machines and have found some that look promising. Unfortunately they all appear to struggle with stringy chips and we end up with one softball sized birds nest from the finish of each cycle. So I looked into shredding machines and they cost as much as the briquetter (or more!).
Now it appears to me that the problem really starts in the lathe and the shredder shouldn't be necessary if we can fix the birds nest, which I'm assuming could also cause problems with robots or part exchanges in a DS lathe...
So here are my questions:
Has anyone made a cheap shredder or have any ideas on how to put something together? And then we have to figure out how to transport the shreddings into the briquetter...
How can we eliminate the stringy chips altogether? Heavier feed? Switch up the insert? Different rough/finish tools?
Haas lathes, 6061, parts are 7-11" diameter and slightly convex, CNGG 431-ML K10 insert, 1950 SFM, .005" per rev, .005" deep finishing pass
I don't exactly have a ton of experience running production so hopefully I didn't forget any vital information!
This is a two part question but I'm hoping there will be some good input even if everything isn't magically resolved.
Working at a business that has been growing year over year and essentially needs to double production capacity overnight. Looking into adding a robot and/or dual spindle lathe to reduce ops and run afterhours. This means double the amount of chips in an ever shrinking facility.
I've been researching briquetting machines and have found some that look promising. Unfortunately they all appear to struggle with stringy chips and we end up with one softball sized birds nest from the finish of each cycle. So I looked into shredding machines and they cost as much as the briquetter (or more!).
Now it appears to me that the problem really starts in the lathe and the shredder shouldn't be necessary if we can fix the birds nest, which I'm assuming could also cause problems with robots or part exchanges in a DS lathe...
So here are my questions:
Has anyone made a cheap shredder or have any ideas on how to put something together? And then we have to figure out how to transport the shreddings into the briquetter...
How can we eliminate the stringy chips altogether? Heavier feed? Switch up the insert? Different rough/finish tools?
Haas lathes, 6061, parts are 7-11" diameter and slightly convex, CNGG 431-ML K10 insert, 1950 SFM, .005" per rev, .005" deep finishing pass
I don't exactly have a ton of experience running production so hopefully I didn't forget any vital information!