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New Machine Day - Hole in the Hospital Edition

rcoope

Stainless
Joined
Sep 25, 2010
Location
Vancouver Canada
This is a major back fill as this actual move happened September 2018, and then we spent some time getting our TRT-160 five axis unit up and running (our timelines mostly) so it got put off. But I finally got some highlight pictures together so here we go. This is a biomedical prototyping and clinical maintenance machine shop in a large Vancouver hospital. We had done a major equipment upgrade in 2007 including a Haas TM-2 with 4th axis which had given stellar service on numerous projects including early stage prototyping that helped get around four university spin off companies off the ground. So with this stellar record and a proposal for some ongoing clinical component manufacturing I will leave out for now, the powers that be smiled upon us and produced the capital dollars to upgrade to a VM-3 ultimately with the new compact TRT-160 5th axis module. There were a few reasons for this choice, and you can actually watch NYCCNC's video on this topic if you want more VM-3 explanation, but one consideration for us was to put the largest machine we could in the floor footprint we had. The TM-2 had originally come in through the doors and down some stairs that aren't shown in these photos, but the VM-3 was way to big, so when the rigger visited, we quickly concluded we had to go through the 12' high, 10' wide window.....

01-TM-2 Original Location.jpg
This is an old photo showing the TM-2 with a 48" press brake hard next to it. This was never satisfactory and the latter has now moved to the mezzanine.

02-Window Start.jpg
Around a week before delivery a crew showed up to remove the window. This was a multi-day ordeal, in part because when they built the building they inexplicably used a 350lb square steel beam in the non structural window frame. On re installation it got replaced by a plywood box!

03 - BP to UBC.jpg
We had to lose one of our two Bridgeport type mills, so this one was donated to colleagues at the university. Alvin from F&G Trucking is a great Hiab operator I can tell you.

04-TM-2 Leaving.jpg
While the window was coming out, the shop staff had been moving machines and getting ready. The TM-2 was traded in as part of the deal so it is about to leave here, having had the outer sheet metal removed. We would have loved to have kept it but there is just no space.

05-Forklift 1.jpg
On to the rigging. The problem was that we had 12' of height to rig this 8' plus machine. The theoretical clearance was going to be around a foot if I recall, and that was only if the machine was quite flat during the lift. That all precluded a regular sling and instead required the bar here, but it took the crew around three hours to get it so it was properly balanced, and that was after doing an entire practice lift at their warehouse. They actually used extra straps and wooden blocks to generate friction against the front of the casting to prevent it from rocking. It was very stressful to even watch!

End of Part 1
 
06-Forklift 2.jpg
This is a good shot showing the clearance involved. I forget the name of this forklift but this is what you get when you are done screwing around. It's like someone solved the exact problem of lifting heavy equipment with minimal vertical clearance and providing the ability to slew the load back and forth on the crane boom as well as driving. Note how our flower bed got rather mowed down for this project.

07-Back Extension.jpg
The forklift also has an extendable counterweight so as the load extends on the boom, the counterweight can balance it.

08-Forklift 3.jpg
Needless to say I was pretty happy once we were in the building but it was a nervy time for the crew until the machine was on the ground. Then I had to swing into action and state exactly how close to the walls it was supposed to be. Fortunately after measuring like 20 times, it sat there exactly like our CAD models.

09-Landed in Shop.jpg
10-VM-3 Night.jpg
In the end, with one less manual mill, the press brake upstairs and the cabinets rearranged, the space is more workable than it was and it's just really cool to sit there and admire the whole thing. You can also see in the last shot that the electrical guys did a nice job with the Unistrut running the power over. This was a new 208V service all the way from the vault, about 125' away. So between that, the window removal and rebuild and the rigging, it was a huge amount of money. But that's how it goes in large institutions, and here it was worth every penny.
 
11-Two vises and TRT160.jpg
A final note: we originally were going to get the TRT-100 4" platen 5th axis unit to manufacture a particular component for individualized radiotherapy. But while the machine was on order, Haas released the TRT-160. This had the particular advantage of being a larger, but also having a larger bore (1.7") in the tilt base, so it may be used for 4th axis operations including some where you have tubing sticking though the machine. We haven't pushed this too much yet, just doing some 3+2 parts that had been on the 4th axis, but so far it's been excellent. You can see here how the compact footprint along the Y-axis is nice as it allows all sorts of things on the rest of the table. Here, an aluminum mandrel is being made, which has gone to a specialist to form bladders for molding novel carbon fiber devices. There will be more large carbon fiber mould work in the next months, so having a machine of this size is great.
 








 
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