Brother guys -- anyone doing advanced thermal comp, beyond the standard parameters?

Finegrain · Dec 5, 2019

Hi guys,

I am looking at ways to improve thermal comp in my S700X1. I know about the parameters and algorithms in the control, but they are only "mileage-based," ticking the comp up every xxxxxxx meters traveled, essentially. This helps, but doesn't keep things close enough. The rate of thermal comp can be adjusted, but it is still just mileage-based and there are times when the comp is less than or more than needed.

I have a good read on coolant temperature, and have wondered if I could rig something up that would react not to mileage, but to coolant temp, which IME is the strongest indicator of where the machine is going to move.

Note that this is somewhat independent of ambient shop temp -- the machine can be quite warmer than the shop at times.

Thanks, and regards.

Mike

Fal Grunt · Dec 5, 2019

The very first thing I would do is call my apps guy...

To be honest, I have done some pretty close tolerance work and haven't had any issues, needing tweaking of the thermal comp. Now that being said... close tolerance is relative. I've done less comp chasing with my Brother than MOST machines I've run...

I would be curious to hear more about what prompted you to look at thermal comp and ways to improve it?

Course I have noticed with my in floor heat, the machine and the coolant tend to be the same temperature. As the machine runs, and the shop heats up, the floor, the coolant, and the machine tend to stay more constant.

Finegrain · Dec 5, 2019

For example, I have some parts that need P2 cuts that blend "exactly" with P1 cuts. .0003" off is very noticeable. I can probe at cut time and find the exact coordinate, but sometimes this is either impractical or just takes up too much cycle time. I have watched the positions drift over the course of a long batch of parts, and can correlate pretty well the axes movements with machine temp changes. Some of it is machine changes, some of it is the material moving, but in both cases, you have to know the actual temperature in order to do something about it.

Just seeing what other might be doing, outside of probing and getting better with the machine's thermal comp settings.

Regards.

Mike

gkoenig · Dec 5, 2019

Finegrain said:
Just seeing what other might be doing, outside of probing and getting better with the machine's

You are correct that the thermal comp system is count based and not thermistor algorithm based. I've heard that there are good reasons for this in production environments (and it isn't like a thermistor is some wildly expensive thing to throw a couple on the machine). Having said that, Brother makes no real effort to document precisely how the system works or any sort of tutorial on setting it up properly.

In theory - the Brother basically has a way of automating what tight tolerance mold and hard milling shops do by permanently mounting a setting ring on the table and probing it every few hours. You pick a set of fixed locations in the machine and probe them every so often throughout the day, measuring the thermal drift over time. The control holds all of those data points in memory and builds a profile, so you would to this for the first few days of production to calibrate it, then it only requires occasional updates (unless your shop environment changes a whole bunch, or the setup changes wildly).

That is the theory, the practice is a bit of a mystery due to the lack of documentation. Where the hell do I tell the machine what the artifact locations are? How do I update the deltas? How much data does it need? Etc etc. To be fair to Yamazen, I don't think Brother Japan has put a lot of effort into helping their application engineers out with this system.

Fal Grunt · Dec 5, 2019

Finegrain said:
For example, I have some parts that need P2 cuts that blend "exactly" with P1 cuts. .0003" off is very noticeable. I can probe at cut time and find the exact coordinate, but sometimes this is either impractical or just takes up too much cycle time. I have watched the positions drift over the course of a long batch of parts, and can correlate pretty well the axes movements with machine temp changes. Some of it is machine changes, some of it is the material moving, but in both cases, you have to know the actual temperature in order to do something about it.

Just seeing what other might be doing, outside of probing and getting better with the machine's thermal comp settings.

Regards.

Mike

You'll have to excuse my ignorance, I don't know what P1 and P2 are?

To me, your expectations are a bit of a reach for a Brother. I ran a million dollar Hermle ("replacement" cost) and would see .01mm drift or more during the course of the day. Hermle's thermal comp is supposed to be among the best from my understanding.

I'm a, keep it simple stupid, cause that is usually the path of least resistance. It sounds like getting the shop temps and coolant temps under control would be the simplest and cheapest improvement?

That being said... will be interested to see what others are doing! Plenty for me to learn....

gkoenig said:
You are correct that the thermal comp system is count based and not thermistor algorithm based. I've heard that there are good reasons for this in production environments (and it isn't like a thermistor is some wildly expensive thing to throw a couple on the machine). Having said that, Brother makes no real effort to document precisely how the system works or any sort of tutorial on setting it up properly.

In theory - the Brother basically has a way of automating what tight tolerance mold and hard milling shops do by permanently mounting a setting ring on the table and probing it every few hours. You pick a set of fixed locations in the machine and probe them every so often throughout the day, measuring the thermal drift over time. The control holds all of those data points in memory and builds a profile, so you would to this for the first few days of production to calibrate it, then it only requires occasional updates (unless your shop environment changes a whole bunch, or the setup changes wildly).

That is the theory, the practice is a bit of a mystery due to the lack of documentation. Where the hell do I tell the machine what the artifact locations are? How do I update the deltas? How much data does it need? Etc etc. To be fair to Yamazen, I don't think Brother Japan has put a lot of effort into helping their application engineers out with this system.

Very interesting, I had no idea such a thing existed on the Brother.

Finegrain · Dec 5, 2019

Fal Grunt said:
You'll have to excuse my ignorance, I don't know what P1 and P2 are?

Block of Al in vise #1 gets a bunch of "topside" features milled, that's P1.
Flip it over in vise #2 and do all the "underside" features, that's P2.

Sometimes P2 has to match up exactly with P1, like this:

That cut, done during P2, has to match up "perfectly" with all the rest of that standoff work that was done in P1.

Regards.

Regards.

Mike

Finegrain · Dec 5, 2019

Fal Grunt said:
It sounds like getting the shop temps and coolant temps under control would be the simplest and cheapest improvement?

Yes, I'm thinking that if I can modulate the coolant temp, things would be more stable. Shop temp is fine, I can keep that very close to 20C.

Regards.

Mike

Fal Grunt · Dec 5, 2019

Finegrain said:
Block of Al in vise #1 gets a bunch of "topside" features milled, that's P1.
Flip it over in vise #2 and do all the "underside" features, that's P2.

Sometimes P2 has to match up exactly with P1, like this:

View attachment 271794

That cut, done during P2, has to match up "perfectly" with all the rest of that standoff work that was done in P1.

Regards.

Regards.

Mike

Ah! I see....

Since you're talking centigrade your probably smarter than me to begin with, so you've probably already got these boxes checked...

Have you gone through your fixturing with a fine tooth comb?

Are you using a torque wrench for your workholding?

That looks like a pretty delicate part that would be very prone to distortion, and .0003" ain't much twist for a part like that.

I'm sure you've been down those roads... but just in case

2outof3 · Dec 5, 2019

Finegrain said:
Block of Al in vise #1 gets a bunch of "topside" features milled, that's P1.
Flip it over in vise #2 and do all the "underside" features, that's P2.

Sometimes P2 has to match up exactly with P1, like this:

View attachment 271794

That cut, done during P2, has to match up "perfectly" with all the rest of that standoff work that was done in P1.

Regards.

Regards.

Mike

Oww! That is tough stuff. You have to find the machine position not just the part position. Using a probe ring gauge will help but you are asking a whole bunch for a machine without scales and a lot of technology.

The machine is not just going to move in Z but Y over the course of the day. That is why the ring gauge.

Finegrain · Dec 5, 2019

Fal Grunt said:
Ah! I see....

Since you're talking centigrade your probably smarter than me to begin with, so you've probably already got these boxes checked...

Have you gone through your fixturing with a fine tooth comb?

Are you using a torque wrench for your workholding?

That looks like a pretty delicate part that would be very prone to distortion, and .0003" ain't much twist for a part like that.

I'm sure you've been down those roads... but just in case

Yes, the part by now is delicate and cannot be squeezed at all, otherwise it just distorts. It is held in a cradle with a pressure plate. No distortion.

Regards.

Mike

gustafson · Dec 5, 2019

So it is really just visual, not like true position precision?

There must be some tooling for that

gkoenig · Dec 5, 2019

I mean, we can in-process probe pretty f-ing quick:

@lumalabsllc on Instagram: “Production speed probing... None of this pausing, protected move, double-touch nonsense. 4 seconds, including the tool change.”

Fal Grunt · Dec 5, 2019

gkoenig said:
I mean, we can in-process probe pretty f-ing quick:

@lumalabsllc on Instagram: “Production speed probing... None of this pausing, protected move, double-touch nonsense. 4 seconds, including the tool change.”

What he said

boosted · Dec 5, 2019

I didn't want to chime in, since I don't know Brother machines at all. However, I do think coolant control will help a lot. When I worked for an MTB, we put coolant chillers on every application where the customer needed things to run especially consistent.

BROTHERFRANK · Dec 5, 2019

I think for the thermal comp to be effective the machine environment would need to be stable, coolant temp held fairly constant, the process would need to be unchanging. Then you would see predictable changes that could be comp'd out. Personally, I would try keeping things stable and then probing. You can probe a known precision entity such as a tooling ball or ring gage or gage pin that is semi permanently set up near the work piece, thermally comp any changes out from there and then probe the work piece. I have seen some very tight tolerances held that way.

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Brother guys -- anyone doing advanced thermal comp, beyond the standard parameters?

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