hey guys it's time for another Pearson workholding Q&A in this
week's episode we're talking machining in general
Questions for this episode how do you manage tool life how do you reduce set-up time and
how do you guys as a company reduce crashes great questions let's jump right in so number
one how do you manage tool life so if you look behind us we primarily have paws and paws mills
and Dusan lathes now the haas mills they have a built in thing of tool life management where it
will alarm out or warn you or something after you've used the tool fifty hundred two thousand
times whatever the number may be we haven't really found that to be very helpful because
how do you know how long an end mill is gonna last how do you know how much life you can get
out of drill unless you already know that number historically we don't really keep a lot of records
on how long a drill actually lasts I mean we've we have some drills that are going on ten years
because we only cut aluminum and they're almost as sharp as day one but we've found this little thing
that is kind of buried or at least I don't hear a lot about so if you go into the Hosken troll
hit current commands go up to the top go to ATM that's advanced tool management and right there
there's a section where you can set the maximum spindle load so for example when we run an end
mill and we just run our program the first time we go through it will set the maximum as maybe
like 50% and see if it gets all the way through the cut it doesn't we kind of bump that number
up the point is to find the maximum tool load at the beginning of your production run with
a nice sharp tool so say that we run that to one maybe but it's a like a half inch rougher and it
maxes out at eighty-five percent we will set the maximum allowable load to ninety-five percent as
that tool dulls and it creeps up because it's a higher spindle load if the tool is dull and it
hits that 95 percent it'll stop it'll alarm out say you miss load apart and like if you're using
the vise and it shifted off to one side it goes to round a corner where there's excessive amounts of
material it'll jump way up in the spindle load and alarm out that has saved us lots of times over the
years it also doesn't rely on a number of uses it relies on an actual number that you can see right
away which is spindle load so that's how we manage tool life next question how do you reduce set-up
time for us we do two things we standardize all our tools so behind me there's two machines that
are dedicated exclusively to two separate product lines and in that for example our VF for SS has a
thirty plus one tool capacity all thirty tools are accounted for that's it two a one two tool
30 if we need thirty four thirty five tools we simply redesign our products so we don't need to
use a thirty fourth or thirty fifth tool or even like you know it's common for drills to be swapped
in and out if it's a short run sometimes it makes sense to pre-drill a hole with a standardized tool
and then just come in and just open it up really quick with an end mill I know I'm gonna get some
some some disagreement about this we don't do that because we just redesign the size of the
hole to use one of our standard drill sizes but as long as we're not touching off tool links changing
tools messing with Kaulitz and we fly through setups the other thing we do is we standardized
offsets now for example on our vacuum chucks we always go for the back left corner of the Chuck
as our origin on our Pro palette systems we use the center of the round pin and the top of any
one of the four paths for our Z that gives us a Z zero and the x and y 0 and then we fully model up
our pallets our fixture and then our parts on top in fusion 360 we're almost confident enough where
we can take a new program load it use a known work offset hit start and walk away we know our
tools because we use standardized tools we know all their offsets so there's no change and then
our recorded tool offsets for either Pro things like that o our row device also the far left well
if you're looking into the machine the far right edge of the road of ice will be our X 0 RZ 0 is
the center of rotation in Z and then Y as well center of rotation that way we just bring in the
model into fusion again model up again almost hits like to start walk away so we don't spend a lot of
time taking tool offsets or finding origins only one of our 8 machines has a probe on it and that's
because the process dictates that all the others we just use with an edge finder or a himer gage
just to establish that Z zero one time now it's a little bit different I understand if you're a job
shop you're always picking up edges hi mix type of things yes a probe makes sense but for us we
just really haven't needed it we actually use the table mounted tool probe to capture our height
offsets so we'll just borrow a few seconds of time in that machine our VF 2 or third VF 2 to get our
tool length offset that's then recorded on a card that travels with the tool so if we pull it out of
one of the other three machines where the tools float in and out because we're doing mix of like
cast iron or stainless steel or aluminum sometimes we may borrow tools swap them out once we take a
tool out we clip that card on it put that tool in the next machine and then we have some 3d printed
tool tag holders that if it goes into tool 7 it goes into card slot 7 I'm gonna do a follow-up
video about that because I get a lot of questions about that as well and finally how do we reduce
crashes so crashes are pretty devastating they're bound to happen a handful of times in a machinist
career I saw an Instagram a buddy posted about having crashed dreams where it's rapid in down
at zero and you're cold and feed hold East stop reset and it's just berries itself yes I've had
those dreams too every single one of my machinists had the same dream - it's a nightmare how does
that not happen in the real world well I'm gonna give you another haast it go to settings type in
setting 103 find it turn it on now what setting 103 does is it turns the cycle start button into
a combination between start and feed hold you ever done that that one - button press when you're like
inching down and Z to make sure you got your z set you don't need to do that you can hold down the
cycle start button as soon as you let go it feed holds this is great we also put it of course in 25
or 5% Rapids that's that's a that's an easy trick but that setting 103 is great for Haas machines
it works pretty much on every generation we've got one machine that's a model year 2000 we've
got our latest one is a 2018 model so it works over all the years so that's how we don't crash
on the Doosan lathes I'm not a lathe guy but he's just really careful maybe we'll bring him on for
another QA and talk about how he doesn't crash the lathes he's worked for me for five years
never once crashed the lathe going back about six years in this previous job so he's kind of do it's
kind of scary but so far so good hey that's it for this episode of pearson workholding QA
if you like this content maybe we've earned your subscription and if we have hit that notification
bell you'll be one of the first ones to watch the next episode now if you have other questions that
we didn't answer general machining questions please add it to the comments section we'd love
to chime in or save it for a future episode so until then go innovate your production
you