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Mazak VTC 200

ygolohcysp

Plastic
Joined
Mar 12, 2017
Hello,

I'm a bit new to the CNC world. Have a Bridgeport and small 9x20 lathe at home. Where I work is bringing all their manufacturing in house. I've recently setup a Bridgeport for them, two surface grinders, and I'm in the process of setting up the first of two blanchard grinders. We're also getting a 24x120 lathe here at work.

Anyway, we just purchased a used Mazak VTC 200. My concern so far is just wondering if there is any preparatory work that needs to be done to the machine before it's moved. I know this is a machine with a stationary table, and the spindle does all the travel. Does that need to be blocked in any way? I'm sure the tool magazine/cassette (sorry, not familiar with the exact terminology yet) will be empty. Any special care aside from disconnecting things and proper rigging?

I'm more of a mechanic/technician/almost-engineer with a solid manual machining hobby background, so I'm not going to be the primary operator on this machine, but I'm sure I'll learn. I'm just presently the person with the most hands on experience with machines in general, and have the most machining experience as well. I always appreciate learning things that interest me, so this should be a fun endeavor.

If there's anything else you think I should know about this machine, feel free to chime in. Once we get it, I'll be spending a lot of time reading the manual.

Thank you in advance.
 
Well, just in case this helps anyone else, it seems the only consideration this machine has beyond moving the standard types of CNC's is that because this machine has a fixed table and the column moves, it tends to be top heavy, and should be bolted down for transit.

Looks like sometime soon, I'll be starting to learn Mazatrol.
 
Most machine tools benefit from a solid foundation that they're anchored to. If your facility has thin concrete floors, or you're not on a ground floor, you may want to research this issue.

As for transit, many machines have fixation brackets that the manufacture uses during initial shipping to keep axis in fixed locations, as ballscrews are usually easy to back-drive. If the previous owners didn't hold onto these brackets you may want to contact Mazak on blocking the axis in some other (safe) way.

If you did speak to Mazak and all they suggested was anchoring to a pallet of some form, that would be a little surprising to me...
 
The machine will be going onto a cement floor and getting anchored down through leveling pads.

The axis are getting blocked for transit, you're correct about that. I'm not sure if they still have original brackets, but I've confirmed with the riggers that it will be blocked to prevent movement. I was more just noting that compared to traditional machines where the table moves and the column only does the Z, this machine is considerably top heavy because the spindle does all the movement.

I appreciate the response. I'm doing going to be doing some reading through this forum to learn info, watch youtube videos, do the mazatrol training. I'm sure I'll come up with questions. As stated, I have experience manual machining. I'm aware of considerations like keeping the tool library as a standard, setting replacement cutting tools at exact depths or needed to reset them in the library, concerns with tool path .vs material/hold downs and verify that nothing will crash, etc. I like to think of it as knowing just enough to have a faint idea of the things I don't know.

For better or worse, because of the success I've had with my hobby projects, the company I'm with is looking to me to build up this department. I do love learning. At the very least, I have it slightly easier because we're gearing up for our own production with limited types of processes and sizes we'll need for our specific parts, rather than building up tooling and libraries to be able to tackle any job that comes our way.
 








 
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