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What's new

New Machine Day... Speedio!

SRT Mike

Stainless
Joined
Feb 20, 2007
Location
Boston MA
I've been a PM member for probably 10-15 years (reading longer than that) and I've had a few machines over the years... but I haven't gotten any new CNC equipment since 2007 when I got my lathe.

Until this week....

Out with the old... I will miss her. She has literally made millions of dollars worth of parts and cost me less than 1% of that in what I paid for the machine and paid for maintenance over the past 15 years. The good news is she's had an easy life, I got her from a shop that cut only plastic and I cut 99.9% plastic and aluminum. Now she's headed from New England over to Missouri to a tool and die shop with several other Leadwells.

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The rigger arrives with a late christmas present!

I ordered the machine the week before XMas to take advantage of the end-of-year pricing Yamazen was doing but didn't want it arriving until end of February.

My salesman, Bill Glowik, is absolutely first class and I've known him for years since he first came by the shop when I was asked to quote a big job and knew I'd need a faster machine. Never any pressure, never any hassle - always lightning fast with information or support and made sure I got exactly what I needed. Best machine buying experience I ever had.


To quote Brad Pitt from Seven.... "WHAT'S IN THE BOX?!?!?!"


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And finally, the fruit of my labor and a big part of what I've been working towards these past 15 years. A brand new never used Brother Speedio S700X1 with a Sankyo 4th axis rotary, 16k spindle, high speed machining, Renishaw tool and touch probes and some other options I am forgetting.

She fits just nice in her little corner of the shop. Marcus from Yamazen is here as I type setting 'er up and getting everything ready. My first brandy-new machine ever, and I am excited!

Big thanks again to Bill and Yamazen and I can't wait to start cranking out some parts. I do consulting for a place with a bunch of (relatively) late-model Robodrills so I know the kind of machining and cutting strategies. I am itching to see how badly the Brother blows them out of the water in speed, though :)

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Congrats!
I'm going to go out on a limb here, and say you'll love it! :)
Set it up for WiFi or ethernet file transfer, makes life easier. As above, use that knob to slow things down.
 
It’s sure nice to get something so shiny and new. Now comes the scary part ;) best Tips I could give are make riser plates for your vises. I used the orange fixture plates on my newest one. This allows use of Maritools stub holders for 1/2, 5/8 tools and they can reach most parts in a vise. Set dry run height in user parameter and actually use it. Crank feed to ZERO and rapid to one. During dry run it runs all feed at rapid so you can use the feed override to crank it up to 1000% as it runs (full rapid for all moves).

Learn and use the high accuracy modes. It’s really easy to start running old parts a lot faster but you will start to lose some dimensional stability if you don’t have the high accuracy mode on and crank the speed up 2x 3x 4x faster than you ran them on other machines. This just bit me in the arse on 2,000 parts. Running Delrin at 175ipm was awesome... but it cost me many hours of painful assembly time. When I run these again I’ll run them at the same speed but I’ll program the counterbore to be a little bigger and one of the undercuts to be a little smaller
 
Can’t use coolant as the chips won’t break and birds nests so dry run and haul arse works best. These took 6x longer on my TM2P. The parts still fit but the counterbores were a little tight and I lost the ability to cheat the parts left or right and when I roughed these out it was a little fast without high accuracy on so that it wasn’t perfect

WOT Designs on Instagram: “40 parts, 80 holes, 80 counterbores... 97 seconds. I’d go faster... but it takes me that long to get 40 parts ready to load. I swear Delrin…”
 
Thanks everyone! Should be ready to rock-and-roll by end of today. I will be here this weekend to re-post my most pressing production jobs and get them going on the Speedio. I have a feeling the machining will go pretty quick compared to what I am used to :)

Congrats!
I'm going to go out on a limb here, and say you'll love it! :)
Set it up for WiFi or ethernet file transfer, makes life easier. As above, use that knob to slow things down.

I have an ethernet cable at the machine and already looked at where/how to connect that. How did you achieve the WiFi connectivity? Was it some sort of USB->WiFi box or is there some kind of add-on for the Speedio I am not aware of? And is the mechanism for getting files into the machine over WiFi the same as it is over ethernet? In other words, if I already have an ethernet cable at the machine, is there any advantage to switching to WiFi?
 
Can’t use coolant as the chips won’t break and birds nests so dry run and haul arse works best. These took 6x longer on my TM2P. The parts still fit but the counterbores were a little tight and I lost the ability to cheat the parts left or right and when I roughed these out it was a little fast without high accuracy on so that it wasn’t perfect
No offense man, but you can't blame a machine on the fact you didn't measure your parts. These machines are insanely accurate.
 
No offense man, but you can't blame a machine on the fact you didn't measure your parts. These machines are insanely accurate.
No offense taken. Pretty frequent when using ones mistakes as an example for others it gets misconstrued as whining or bitching about a machine. I have three Speedios and they make a hell of a lot of parts and money. You can crank these up to ridiculous speeds and they will happily run at those speeds without pauses and jerks but sacrifice some accuracy to do it. That’s why there are various modes which allow different deviations from programmed line. The machine is doing what is told and it was told to haul tail At the expense of accuracy since I didn’t have any of the other modes engaged. I could have offset the tool and every part would have been perfect. I probably should have played around with the accuracy modes and likely could have maintained part stability at those speeds with the given tool and offset. My 27K spindles rarely use tools that big (3/32) or cut non-tool steel. I have never spent the time to learn the accuracy modes I just figured out what worked for my parts and have left those machines in those programs with that setting. Not “blaming the machine” just giving advise to learn the machines abilities and using my mistake as an example.
 
Thanks everyone! Should be ready to rock-and-roll by end of today. I will be here this weekend to re-post my most pressing production jobs and get them going on the Speedio. I have a feeling the machining will go pretty quick compared to what I am used to :)



I have an ethernet cable at the machine and already looked at where/how to connect that. How did you achieve the WiFi connectivity? Was it some sort of USB->WiFi box or is there some kind of add-on for the Speedio I am not aware of? And is the mechanism for getting files into the machine over WiFi the same as it is over ethernet? In other words, if I already have an ethernet cable at the machine, is there any advantage to switching to WiFi?
If you already have ethernet, no advantage to adding wifi. I have 4 of them, and my office confuser is a bit away from the machines, so easier to do WiFi. BrotherFrank turned me on to this:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00TQEX8BO/ref=oh_aui_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1
Powered by the USB port next to the WiFi in the cabinet.
Cycle times did go down a bunch when I got mine. These machines are amazing for the right envelope!
 
I bet the growth of Speedios in job shop is directly related to Andy's time spent here... Andy I'm sure the big boss appreciates your effort =).
I remember back when the cool kid club was a lot smaller LOL

- OP congrats on the new machine!!!
 
I bet the growth of Speedios in job shop is directly related to Andy's time spent here... Andy I'm sure the big boss appreciates your effort =).
I remember back when the cool kid club was a lot smaller LOL

- OP congrats on the new machine!!!

Thank you. See you Tuesday morning.
 
Uhhh, so I got my programs re-posted for the Speedio last night and ran my first part (fixture that holds a batch of parts).

Previous cycle time was 48 minutes. On the Speedio?

7 minutes and 38 seconds.

....and I was taking it easy with rapids at 50%, and was peck tapping (didn't want to - need to update my post). So I could definitely get that down under 7 minutes with minimal effort.

I was shocked. I was thinking *maybe* I could get a 50% cycle time reduction, since I didn't really think much of my cycle time was in tool changes. But I was wrong. It's everything. It's spindle acceleration. It's table acceleration. It's tool changes. It's NC code processing. The Speedio just flat out COOKS.

I run/program a bunch of Robodrills for a customer, 31i controls, some 10k spindle, some 27k spindle, and all less than 10 years old. The Speedio will eat their lunch any day of the week. And it's not even close.

I am off to Spain in 2 weeks for a vacation. I was worried that by the time I got the Speedio, got it installed and got my programs running, I wouldn't have enough time to make enough stock to cover needs while I was away. Now I am wondering what I am going to do with the week of free machine time I will have before I go.
 








 
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