Running Qualichem Xtremecut 292 through the ChipBlaster M30-70

We were running Master Chemical E206. It was blue- greasy, smelled funky, left sticky residue all over the machine, foamed fairly good, and ran off with chips and out of the sump with the tramp oil constantly.

Qualichem is really making everyone happy from the operators, to the settup guys to me the owner who pays the various bills.

We switched to Qualichem 292, and this is day 1. The coolant is clean. I can see through the window when the machine is on and coolant running. The stuff smells like a car wash in a good way. It runs off parts. A DCMT ID turn tool life went from 17 minutes to 30.

We're running an 1/8" TIALN end mill 4 flute (two end) for 75 minutes at 13333RPM on one side of the cutter in a WTO live tool. That tool is running a mastercam dynamic path running 28" a minute.

Don't mistake that for a Mastercam endorsement. I have a lathe with live tools (several actually), so I constantly edit operations in CIMCO. The C axis indexes are never logical for the cutting, and timing of one feature to the next is constantly needing to be fixed manually. Mill turn apparently is smarter, but they don't support single turret subspindle machines with mill turn, so Mastercam is really a half nice software that is pretty much a total failure to make my life easier in the way I expected a $25,000 software to be capable of. Apparently rumor has it Mastercam is going to bring some LOGIC to their lathe/live package in 16 months or so. Until then I'll just work 12 hours to do 5 hours of work.

I don't have experience with other cam packages, but I could think of better ways to do this and I'm a layperson.

I run Qualichem, love everything about it.

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Have you altered your post? Most people don't edit the post and just want to call Mastercam a pile of shit.

Mtndew said:

Have you altered your post? Most people don't edit the post and just want to call Mastercam a pile of shit.

Click to expand...

My post is I believe a Postability post. I've worked with the reseller Shopware back and forth a bit, and also with a local consultant who is really skilled and smart and has a decade or more in Mastercam. We tried to get the machine to index the feature to the back of the cabinet and cut code there, and then index features and cut them, but that forced all my machining operations to be C indexes. So I lost the capability to do anything not requiring a C index (such as straight XYZ operations or C axis live operations).

The software should allow various approaches to Mill turn operations to be conducted without loss of the orientation of one feature to the next. Live C no Y, Live milling without C indexes, and live milling with C indexes. You really need a higher level of control in a mill turn machine, because these machines have a lot of clearance issues.

I've found it to have stationary C live milling, if I want a C index and XYZ milling to make a patterned feature I have to code the feature, transform, grab one of the coded operations that is close to ideal, figure out how to C index the machine to get it in the right place, and copy and paste the operation in CIMCO with C moves to constitute a pattern.

It's a joke. The software is at times impressive, but overall unimpressive in that it has such huge gaping holes.

I code an operation and the software will be XYZ cutting on the X NEGATIVE side of the part. That's illogical and totally wrong. I have to pull that into CIMCO and flip all the Z's and Y's to get a correctly coded climb milled operation on the side of the machine that has turret clearance to the subspindle housing.

That's a big waste of time.

It would seem that the software should be asking the person how they want to cut the operation, or having them identify the rear of the machine cabinet for the operation. Instead it's like the software doesn't want to support a turning center. I've tried rotating planes and I haven't found a way to get the software to do logical things that don't require labor intensive Cimco edits.

The plane based system of cutting is counter-intuitive in itself. The software should have some understanding of a machine type and that should be built into a post. Instead it needs hand holding- the customer defines certain things in every job that never change in the machine environment.

The way it is, Mastercam is expensive, and not user-friendly. You don't have a capability unless you can implement it. I've invested $10,000 in training, and a couple thousand more in search of consulting help on post edits. I really think Mastercam should be fixing their product or providing hundreds of HAAS automation style videos, so that customers can get explanations from professionals easily when needed. I don't have HAAS machines but I respect their customer service. They want their customers to know how to use their product.

If CNC software was my company, I wouldn't be waiting for the summer of 2018 to fix issues from 2016. It would be an all out emergency to get the Lathe and multi-axes software working right. Obviously happy customers will try to sell product. I litteraly searched for a Qualichem T-Shirt, and pimped Qualichem 292 to 2 of our industry partners the first day we cut parts using qualichem. It's that good.

I agree, the lathe and mill-turn side of Mastercam is pretty bad and has needed love since the V9 days.

Today Fanucs regional technician installed Tool load monitoring, and found that one of the machines had a faulty sensor in the part ejector.

The silver lining on going into a part ejected job with no part ejector was looking down and realizing the tramp oil sumps were working properly now!

The oil is on top going into the waste oil bucket, and the clean Qualichem 292 is going back into the sump! That's a huge difference from Master Chemical E206- which just left the machine by the pail.

Lower recycling costs.

I started running Iscar's Sumo drills (the newer stronger style). Running an ICM .279 indexable carbide head, we set up the .450" hole to make entry at .0028/rev and then fed at .0033"/rev (same drill same hole no peck) in 17-4 stainless steel condition A. The Iscar material said get initial spindle load and kill the tool at 125% of that initial. So initial was 16% load. We ran it tracked in minutes in Fanuc tool life, and the work with that drill was finished at 50 in cut minutes and spindle load was 18%. So maybe it would have ran 60 or 65 minutes in the cut.

We got 600 holes on that insert, and then the drill size for the part family needed to change so maybe we could have gotten 700 or so.

Our OD turn tools (DNMG wipers with .032 corners) we run at 800SFM at .012 to rough and .008 to finish (same tool rough and finish), and they were giving us 12 minutes in critical size/ finish applications with diameters held to about +-.001 and we are now running them 20 minutes.

We have a face turning tool (.197" wide full radial insert IC808 grade) from Iscar running smoothly 21 minutes in the cut grooving at .006" and feeding at .007 side turning on the face. We had to slightly modify that holder because it didn't seem to have enough relief, but otherwise it's great.

Process stability is way up. I had a machine spitting parts out the door for 2 hours at a time without a check while we worked a settup yesterday- the rotarack was just filling up with parts in the background.I bought a wet dry vac from Milwaukee tools for coolant issues (seperating E206 from oil) and now I might have to reconfigure it and use it as a dry vac for pulling chips off rotaracks and part conveyors.

I'm looking forward to getting the Sandvik 880 numbers worked up and seeing what kind of gain is associated to that.

Switched the last sump over to Qualichem 292 last weekend. Ran another part prove out with 292 in another. The prove out went smooth as butter. It was too easy. The program went in, the first part off was a good part, no chip evacuation issues, no speed or feed issues- it just wanted to be made.

I figured some numbers and 292 is saving us $3000 a month in carbide, and 4 hours of insert changes per week (two shifts worth of insert change savings) so at the end of the month our guys are running a free 16 hours of operation that we didn't get before. That's $1892 worth of machine time including payroll we didn't have before.

On 292 our machines in that cell are costing $.88 coolant per hour, $4.50 worth of carbide, $1.22 electric, ~$10 machine amortization $14.50 payroll per hour.

For sucking up metal chips, I highly recommend using a microfiber towel wrapped around the filter boss and held in place with hose clamps. It filters well, handles wet chips, and flows better than a paper filter, and it's a lot cheaper.

Our M30-70's have the cyclonic filters, so no filter elements. We use an X-air drum vac to pull the old coolant, and because we were changing coolant, we just cleaned sumps and refilled tanks with the new Qualichem 292. The machines are spotless, the coolant is almost clean enough to eat, and it gets exciting!

I looked in the window yesterday on an OD turn and could see the coolant breaking chips. It was a beautiful thing.