Machine Porn: These gal's got some hips...

Any finalization on chip removal, or do you just have to run at half speed?

Thanks for the pics, just noticed the firewall above...makes your bridge crane a bit more difficult.

I hope these are old pics and you have not had time to post because otherwise it's been a bit of time for these to be up to speed????

Steve

I'm still running at about 60% of where it should be be but right now, we're waiting on part qualification so these aren't running much until then. Then we can push them more to see what happens. There's still quite a bit on the laundry list though....

The pics are new but the magazines have been installed for a couple or few months now. That was a huge learning curve for Toyoda.

As for the firewall, it's actually an abandoned requirement now. We could submit a change and shorten or remove them. Those are actually quite a bit higher than they look and leave plenty of room for a bridge crane. But what they really need to do is get on the ball for a FMS system so I wouldn't have to jerk around with a crane over the machines...

...but you have to wonder, how many FMS system would ever be used on a "mid-sized" (I thinking size wise for you! ) horizontal. Things generally go lower volume on large parts and high volume on small parts, so where would their payoff be is selling you and maybe one other FMS for multi-meter pallets?

Well, if nothing better, you have forced them to bring their engineering up a few notches, although it has cost you a ton in time, frustration and money.

Steve

Actually, you might be surprised at how much work and repeating or contract work there is for "mid-sized" and large envelope. The big payoff for large envelope isn't necessarily the "volume" of work per se but in all of the "other stuff" involved with large work. Things like offline setup, queue time during FA buyoffs (Internal or by customer), pre-determined modular setups for multiples of part clamping, etc, etc...

Most people believe that volume of a 'single part' alone dictates whether you can justify a FMS system or not. THIS IS QUITE FAR FROM THE TRUTH. It's all in how you've configured your total system. I've set up and configured many cell systems that are strictly involved in rapid prototype/R&D/Short run type of work and have it perform far better than any stand-alone machine in both time involvement and cost returns. Another plus is when moving from prototype to production, the set ups and programming can transfer directly since most shops are driving to that goal of a FMS running the volume parts. There's lots of good reasons for a FMS regardless of machine envelope.

Well, if nothing better, you have forced them to bring their engineering up a few notches, although it has cost you a ton in time, frustration and money.

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Very true on both accounts.... Question is whether they actually learned anything or not..

Haven't had an update in a while

Yeah it has been awhile. Not much to report for right now. We're waiting on production approvals from the cutomer. However, we have some other things going on too..

Looks like the foundations are going south. Top layer appears to be crap and the machines are moving around. We're sorting that out right now but we'll be moving one them off of its pad to rework it. I also think that the machine design for the J-bolts isn't sufficient or proper for the purpose but as long the foudation has issues, we have to start with that.

Other add-ons... They've changed out the chip augers to high speed types, new high speed auger motors bolted on.. this was an interesting gig. One of the augers wasn't built right and when we turned it on, it sounded like an old coal burning freight train going over a 150 year old wooden bridge. You could hear this thing in the parking lot.

Had to have the light curtains changed out on a couple machines. It would false trigger or something and get "stuck". Couldn't figure it out with 5 miles of wire so it was simply replaced all together. The only way to fix it before then was to down power the machine.

Also, had the machine probes installed last week. Both the pop-up ATLM and spindle probe. These were done by a 3rd party but it all came out nice (finally). The spindle probe is Renishaw's new RMP600 radio probe. Been running them on my Mazaks for awhile and they are super nice. At first, with the machine envelope so large, the "line of sight" for the OMMs would lose the probe. With the radio probe, no more issues with that.

And the saga continues...

Wow. So you've had these things for almost a year and they're still not making production parts? Is that something a company of your size expects when you shell out for machines like this? I know at your level it's really not about that money, but still, you'd think from an accounting stand point you wouldn't want a few million(s) dollar machine sitting around for a year waiting for parts. Or, did you figure it would take a year just to get the machines sorted to the point they could work in a production environment? Always curious how the big boys do their business, in case we ever need to worry about it.

Actually StreetSpeed is bang on here. It is a really good question. Is it a case of the machines still being in a yet to be commissioned state so payment has not been made, or perhaps only part payment? The space itself costs a lot as well as training for staff, perhaps there have been orders that could not be satisfied so the buyer of the machines has to pay a late penalty?

I do know if I was buying a machine I would want it in and going straight away. While straight away isn't realistic you wouldn't want to be waiting more than a month. I think a month might be a fair thing to budget for just to make sure that the machine comes in, is levelled, tested as being up to spec, hasn't been damaged on the way there, and then of course things like getting the required tooling with the right fixtures etc. After that tradesmen have to become familiar with the machine, get comfortable running it learn its various quirks and so on.

When I was an apprentice at Trade School they told me that you don't pay for a machine until it has been commissioned. I didn't get it then, but these days what I was told seem just so important.

Stephen

There's a bit of a catch 22 with large business stuff. Politics plays a huge role. Are there conditions and expectations to be met? You bet your ass. But it's not like Toyoda isn't trying to work on the issues, they're busting their ass to fix the issues. The problem is the machine deal from the start and what we we're looking for and needed. Without getting into too much of the "contractual" agreements, many things got assumed and with quite a bit of "dice rolling". It's all costing everyone quite a bit I assure you.

As for the production, all three machines have been in production mode off/on. They'll make parts... just needs a lot of baby-sitting, work arounds, hand holding, band-aids, adjustments, bla bla bla....

Toyoda (or rather JTEKT perhaps) put these things together almost like a "Hail Mary" job for lack of better words. New control software, new OS software, new machine dynamics, etc. On top of that, our machines were the first ones in the country (only 1 installed before us) and within the top 20 of the world from what I know. And not a single one of them run the applications and programming that I do. Our combination is "unique" in that we have about every option under the sun going. But Toyoda had no F'ing business calling these "FH/SX" machines for sure. They built these 'race cars' but now I'm driving. Can't see how they got these around the Test Track...

Blue Steel said:

Actually StreetSpeed is bang on here. It is a really good question. Is it a case of the machines still being in a yet to be commissioned state so payment has not been made, or perhaps only part payment? The space itself costs a lot as well as training for staff, perhaps there have been orders that could not be satisfied so the buyer of the machines has to pay a late penalty?
Stephen

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You bet…a lot of this is set around delivery commitment from the dealer. A lot of times you base your commitment to customers for product of these machines especially if you are talking steady and growing production runs.

We received a 200k discount on a 750k machine because it came in 5months late. Everything down to the penny on lost production and dollars was calculated over the course of the 5months. Luckily we had established a few smaller machines of the same style running production so it was just the matter of we could not take on more capacity until we had the larger machine. We also had start up issues and held onto to remaining 20% until the machines were up and running.

Psycho is at a much larger scale then we ever were so things could have been set a bit different for him. This was also over 12yrs ago so things could be differnt now. It is nice to hear that they are busting there a$$es to get these monsters running to full potential.

Stevo

Hey Psycho, you out there? Anything new you can share? You know we haven't forgotten

Well... let's see here... what do I got going on here....

I still need the machine foundations dealt with. This is going to be big work since the machines have to come off the pads. I've already done this once on one machine because of the grouting, but now the pad surfaces are showing signs of being jacked up so the machine are pounding themselves a hole in the concrete. You get what you paid for....

Machin wise... I still have severe chip removal problems. None of the machines are in a production status because the chips can't get out of the machine. The high speed augers have been added and they swapped out the motors for faster models. These things sound like a train and make a lot of racket. Another thing that sucks is that Toyoda put all of the hydraulics right behind you at the Operator door. It was bad enough with the big pumps cranking away in your ear... now add the noise of the chip augers, plus the cutting tool.... Sh!t, you go deaf in about 3 minutes. This is a piss poor place to put hydraulics. Plenty of other places that I can think of.

Toyoda has assigned yet another engineer to deal with our coolant/chip problems. Think this makes number 4.. 5... hell, I lose count. I've talked to this guy like twice, send some pictures and haven't heard anything since. That was several weeks ago. Meanwhile, we just keep shoveling chips. I'm trying to figure out a way to tool change a broom and pitch fork but haven't come up with anything yet....

Coolant capacity is another problem. But that might be the effect of having so much chips stuck in the machine that the coolant doesn't recover back to the tank fast enough. So the machine bombs out with the TSC running, etc. I'm being told that this a something like a 400 gallon tank but I don't see it. Maybe 200 range is more like it. The tank isn't really that big compared to all of my other ones.

Loading parts on this machine is getting to be tiresome everyday too. Even with a gantry it's a severe pain in the ass and super dangerous. With all the safety crap they put on these things, the dumb asses make the loading area/pallet changer the most dangerous place to be on the machine and that's where you spend most of your time! For whatever reason, Toyoda/JTEKT decided to build a 1250mm HMC with a pallet changer where the tables can't be rotated once outside on the load stations!!! You try loading a 5 inch plate at 60 inches square on the backside of a 64 x 70 tombstone and not be able to rotate the tombstone to face you. We have to bring the part around the stone, get it between the APC door and setup, then load it. And that deck up there is slicker than snot. Many guys have taken a tumble and there are many places to jack you up and get hurt real bad up there.

Some JTEKT engineers fell asleep on that one. Dumbest thing I've ever seen. And this is supposed to work with a FMS? That's the next dumb thing going...

Am I getting tired of these things??? You bet. After what.. a year and a half or so? These things still cannot go into production.... still don't make any money... TMU and JTEKT still can't get everything fixed right.

It can handle light work or work that doesn't put out alot of material very fast. It definately has capacity and many nice things going for large envelope working. But if you do large cavity work and hog outs... Don't buy this machine. It is not capable of doing that. Of course, I can overrun this machine with only doing 2-1/4" plate work with it's cavities. Chips just pile up all over the damn place...

Rant Off... I'm going to go play with my other new girls... I know they keep up....

So what would be your plan of attack for this scenario if you could start all over again?

david n said:

So what would be your plan of attack for this scenario if you could start all over again?

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I think I might know the answer to this one....

Pretty unfortunate that these machines are not running up to snuff after this long. Not a good situation for all involved.

yeah.... Joe knows the answer.... I'll give a hint.... It starts with "FH" and ends with "12800" .... and it's not a "toy" . With that, I'd have a proven machine, proven control, good chip removal, working coolant functions, pallet loading station with turntables, more spindle power, working Tool Hive, an FMS system that exists (and not just a 'concept'), gobs of memory standard, HSM software that doesn't need a boat load of tuning, rotary tables that stay together and not need a bunch of tuning with an autocollimator, good solid machine foundation bolt down design, a control that wasn't only half way thought about, a pendant for the Tool Hive (instead of a 2 mile long extension cord from the operator control), would've been up and running making boat loads of money a year ago, la la la la la la

I'll say again though... TMU and JTEKT has been working it hard to get these girls up to snuff. But all that work doesn't get around the extreme short comings of these machines when they landed. There are some nice features about them that other makes don't have. However, the Cons far exceeds the Pros.

I'll also add that the majority of the control issues have been resolved one way or another over the past year. But it took a long time and a lot of work. Hell, it took them a couple or few months just to figure out how to get the ATLM to flag the tool data page and tool hive for a broken tool. Of course, since TMU/JTEKT can't figure out a way for me to write tool data to the OP Supporter (Toyoda's overlay), looks like I'll have to dump that too and use the FANUC side. And if I can't write to it by program, then neither can my presetter. The only way that happens is by uploading a CSV file for the OP Supporter to read... crock of shit and convoluted.

I imagine that by the time TMU, JTEKT and I get done with all the fiddle-farting around with these things, they'll be a real nice machine to buy... Of course I'm still stuck with the half-baked rigged machines... Not sure how they'll get around the chip problem though without redesigning the column, base casting and the layouts. Can't get a bigger hole going there because the iron and other crap is in the way....

.... Well, they make for good campfire stories anyway ...

Psycho, sorry to hear that things have not worked out after almost a year and a half. I'm frustrated for you.

I looked back over most of the thread over the last couple days...interesting that most of the shrotcomings that were noted before the machine made any chips have caused you serious grief. I looked at the pic with the augers (Joe even commented about how tiny they are), they look very similar in size to the ones on our vertical, and they can barely keep up with 25HP.

I am interested in your position on throwing in the towel and ordering the three FH12800's and proven FMS. I presume that you have thought this scenario through. If the Toys will never meet your needs, then your ROI is out the window anyway, maybe it would be better to cut your losses and start over. The safety issues of loading parts alone would almost warrant a change...2,000# plates tend to squish more than just fingers. The worst part of the whole thing, other than someone getting injured, is the inability to deliver parts as planned - I do hope you are meeting your customers' requirements, but I have a hard time believing you can if you planed for three machines, and they are running at somewhere in a 40% range (I assume you are using up a bunch of efficiency with the snow shovels, TSC issues, etc. ).


Steve

Out of interest, do you have any thermal/repeatability problems on machines of this size?

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Huh.... doesn't run long enough to get warmed up!
(I shouldn't say that...)

Thermal issues will depend on how everything is working with the machine and the shop environment you're in. Most modern machines have thermal controls and compensation in place for the spindle. Many MTBs then have options (some standard) for the motion controls like cooled ballscrews, oil coolers, coolant chillers, HD spindle chillers, glass scales, etc. Add to that, the shop environment as well and the cutting temps at the part.

I can't say for the FH1250s reaction since they don't stay running long enough to track history and plus I have other issues that affect that outcome and data. But generally, I haven't run a large machine since the '80s that I would consider "thermally challenged". Rather, it's a matter of understanding the thermals of a particular machine, and being able to work with it freely. If you can do that, then you don't have a thermal problem in my book. But if you're always chasing your tail or running on the ragged edge of tolerance with unpredictable outcomes, then you have a problem.

There are certainly specific things you'll want to be sure you have in place for a machine this size. Once I get to the 630mm size machines, I start looking at more options and equipment to control the machine dynamics.

Questions:

What does FMS stand for? (I understand it's some variant on a pallet pool - but whare the actual words that make up the acronym?)

What/who is/are JTEKT?

What/who is/are TMU?

And finally - is a tool matrix/hive/giant-rack-of-tools mean to serve multiple machines? Or is it 300+ tool changer for just 1 machine? (I would think you'd want to share it, and the pallet pool, but....)

Barbter,

I haven't done any real "cavity" work yet on these because of the chip problem so I haven't had to machine in the situation you describe. As for the column growing, I haven't noticed but again, machines are not in full production to even equate any history.

But, for big machines in general.... yes, thermal can be a problem with machine geometry. There are ways to machine around some and even probe them out but again, new generation machines have much better controls, casting design, foundation design, etc to combat this. But, in general, you are correct. Depending on foundation design (how the machine is attached, not necessarily the concrete itself) the motion can be large or next to none. 10 or 20 microns isn't a whole lot for cavity type work so it would be ignored but for precision work, it can certainly make you or break. For note, I do run a warm up program on all large equipment (regardless of spindle speed). It runs through the spindle rpm range and all axes are in motion to come up to "operating temperature". The program is also triggered by timers in the event a machine is idle for extended periods.

Bryan,

TMU stands for "Toyoda Machinery USA". It is the US division of the machine tool company based in Illinois.

JTEKT is the parent company in Japan that TMU reports to. JTEKT also owns Mitsui Seiki and a couple other European brands.

FMS is a "Flexible Manufacturing System". These, unlike pallet pools, are modular by design and can be added to (more machines, more pallets, stacker, more load stations, etc). Below is a picture of my FH8800 FMS system. I think I have pictures of other FMS systems in this thread or my other thread in the Mazak forum.

Tool Hive, Tool Matrix is a single magazine for a single machine. I attached pictures on a post (I think) of a Tool Hive bolted onto one of my Toyodas. It is a 330 tool magazine for one spindle. I have tool hives on most of my large machines and other cell production machines.