Super Precision & Productivity Magazine - Volume 2, Issue 2 - (Page 18)

ports bring to contour work, other than accuracy and repeatability, is their speed — speed in transferring data. The control on both new machines — a Fanuc 18i MB — is a real advantage to us in transmitting data very quickly.” Power and data Powers says that they had developed a bottleneck in machining the contours of some of their horns. “These two Bridgeports replaced two high-end Japanese machines, which frankly couldn’t keep up with the data, nor could they produce as fine a finish,” commented Powers. “The Bridgeports are just so much faster,” Powers says. “The control technology of the previous machines simply couldn’t keep up. For one thing, they were drip fed data. The program was in a PC, and we’d feed blocks of data across to the machine tool through a wire. The machine tool had a certain baud rate, a speed at which it could interpret data. What would happen is that we would have to slow the machine down because the machine controls couldn’t digest the fine increments of data as fast as the machine could act on them. We’d take a part and create a point cloud of the shape and from point to point that might be 0.00003” or 0.00004”. We’d feed that information across to the machines, and they’d go into starvation mode because we couldn’t feed information fast enough to keep the spindles turning.” With the new Bridgeports, machine starvation is nonexistent. The data literally flies from the control to the spindle, keeping productivity up and helping to reduce the chance of process interruption. Powers notes that as a result he can run at 80 to 100/ipm, where with the other machines he’d run at 35 to 40/ipm and still be worried about starvation alarms going off at that rate. The Bridgeports are literally twice as fast. VMCs include a pair of machines from Bridgeport’s top-end line, the Bridgeport 760XP3 and Bridgeport 610XP3 (marketed today as the Bridgeport XR 760 and XR 610), both ordered within seven months of each other.” Flexible, fast, easy to change over, very precise and rigid, that’s how Powers describes his newest Bridgeport vertical machining centers. Very powerful as well — not just in cutting chips, but also in the manipulation of huge data files (some are 30 to 40 megs) which is routine with contour work. The contour is very much like an injection mold; it’s the shape that must fit the shape of the plastic part. Typically, about 90 percent of the work Powers does on his new Bridgeports is contour work. Powers notes that a cross section of parts Branson makes may be very small, some the size of a quarter. However, contours that are 3.00” x 5.00” or 6.00” x 5.00” square can require a data file that’s quite large. Larger still are contours that can be 14.00” to 16.00” long by 3.00” wide — like some surgical instruments or a snorkel for divers. These can have data files that are absolutely huge. “One thing about these parts is that they must have a very good finish,” says Powers. “The better the finish, the easier it is for us to polish. If you’ve seen injected molded tools, they’ve got a mirror finish. And that’s what we do; we replicate that type of finish by hand polishing. What the Bridgeports allow me to do is create a very tight, dense point cloud, so the step-over from slice to slice as we’re going across is very, very small, and that makes a finer finish and reduces polishing time significantly. The big advantage the Bridge18 www.hardinge.com Finishes Powers remarks that another advantage of the Bridgeports is the finish they produce machining the titanium horns. “We don’t machine to a tolerance, like an aircraft shop might,” he says. “What we have to do is fit the part so that when they’re welding there’s no marking on the surface of the plastic part. The requirement is that our part has to fit precisely and exactly. This is very hard to http://www.hardinge.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Super Precision & Productivity Magazine - Volume 2, Issue 2

Super Precision & Performance - Volume 2, Issue 2 Contents Corner View Worth Noting World View Jig Grinding From Farm Branson-Tooling Radical Sportscar Creating The Impression Hardinge QUEST GT 27 S Hardinge ELITE 27 MS Propelling Productivity Bridgeport FGC 2

Super Precision & Productivity Magazine - Volume 2, Issue 2

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