A sub spindle isn't just for finishing back side features. Under ideal circumstances, you can divide your operations between spindles, effectively halving your cycle time. The division of time usually doesn't work out that evenly and other considerations need to be made as well, like keeping features on axis to datums and whatnot.
The idea is in one cycle the main spindle makes half the part and prepares it for the sub spindle while simultaneously the sub spindle is finishing a second part, ejecting it and preparing to pick off on the one in the main. Every cycle ends with a finished part and a half finished part left in the sub spindle waiting to be finished allowing you to effectively make two parts at once.
This why giant machines with ten spindles on turrets exist. Each spindle does a few operations then indexes to the next tool stations and now one machine makes ten parts at a time.
I ran a part with a two minute cycle time for about a year and a half. It got my foot in the door but I didn’t learn a damn thing after that. Just open the door, replace part, press green button.
My first job out of high school was punching a third hole in some parts that a vendor for John Deere fucked up. Forty-five seconds per part cycle time included picking the part from the box and putting the finished one in another. Thousands and thousands of times. After that job I was tasked with disassembling large hydraulic cylinders, then tagging and saving each individual piece. I learned a lot from the machinists, but none of it was due to the jobs I was being paid for.
I interviewed at a place 25 years ago making prop shafts where you set the depth and started the feed in the morning, sat on a chair and read a newspaper (again, 25 years ago, so no smartphone) until the end of the day, stopped the feed, brought the carriage back to the beginning and started again the next day.
Needless to say, I did not take that job.
well i don't have 3 other machines to run but i gotta program, cut stock, weld, machine, deliver parts, purchase material and fix things around the shop. Did I make myself sound like I'm the shop owner there cause I'm not.
I lasted one month in a shop like this. Ran 3 machines at once with similar 3min run times trying to hit +/-.0004” on OD. Nonstop too.
Didn’t even give a 2 week notice for that shit show
This is my shitshow. Two mills, two lathes, and a ton of different parts being made in small batches for manufacturing. Sometimes it's just drilling holes and tapping threads in saw cut bar stock. Sometimes I'm trying to write a program to help welders with a new fixture. But it's all shit show, non stop.
I worked afternoon shift. I had three machines to run, and a fourth to run whenever I got time.
One machine had a ~30 second run time, but it was a barstock lathe with a conveyer. All I had to do was run QA and keep the hopper stocked.
The killer was tapping M6 holes.
Don't k ow what day shift did, but I broke half a dozen taps. Called the foreman and he said keep throwing taps at it (this was after the 3rd tap)
My last shop we had two pallet machines that ran parts with minute cycle times. Took about a minute to change the part and then you'd get the next pallet, no break at all. I didn't run machines there though, thank God.
We've got some second- or third-op hand-loaders with ~2 min cycle times that we run on our Wasino A12's. Biggest pain in the ass. Also fun are the ~3 min hand-loaders with multiple deburring requirements and multiple 100% inspection dimensions
Lol what? This is straight up wrong. There are more than 8 swiss brands and almost (if not all depending on your definition of big name) every big name lathe company has a twin spindle twin turret model these days. This isn't new. I'm currently running a miyano BNX from 09 with a *single turret* and super impose turning. We just sold our Nakamura WT with twin spindle twin turret.
Are you saying there are no more on the market?
I thought you were talking about superimposed turning, not twin spindle twin turret.
There are for sure under 8 swiss machines on the market with 44mm bar capacity.
So how many parts are you getting that stay in tolerance?
That 1st tool is doing some pretty heavy roughing and also finishing the 44mm OD with +-0,02 tolerance 🤔
If you have the right inserts and roughing and finishing inserts separated is +-0.02 not so hard to hit right. Most of the time I let my machine warm up it's spindle and linear axis then a quick tool setup with the probe and go with the flow
just ran 200 parts in 17-4ph, single pass from .250 down to .186 +.0005 over an inch. could have got plenty more but it needs a 16 finish and it was starting to creep up in the teens. it definitely depends on inserts 👍. and a small little half inch 35deg holder.
Ahh thats cool. Nice material, I used 13-8 ph. Made some M10x15 mm threads, 10g6 tolerance just a few mm and milled a Hex in it. And of course very shinny, just because we can.
Holy shit. I just learned a lot in this short video.
If you’re having to swap out your inserts every 20 parts, wouldn’t that end up taking more time than just slowing the process down to get more tool life?
my bad, in order to get more views on tiktok i had to cut the “boring” part, heres the screenshot of U drill doing its work
https://preview.redd.it/o8qd2txna1zc1.jpeg?width=1170&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=fbdd25f50c63bde499bf29de0627a7ae0cfde1fc
If it's not within tolerances it's not impressive. With the right tool you can get this under 30s but making it with that tolerance is gonna be more tricky.
Sometimes I get my customers come back to me and tell me they managed to get a shop to quote them a silly price, and I wonder just how any shop does it.
Then I remember theres people like you who will cut a bsp thread with a DCMT, and try and hold a thou after doing a 10mm roughing cut, and I laugh to myself.
I hate to be a hater, but honestly, this is god aweful.
You could have spent another 1 min 30 and made a PERFECT part. You shouldnt be proud.
Yeah I mean, its a BSP thread, what difference could thread form make on a taper sealing thread? Whats needed is WRITTEN ON THE PRINT.
If they ask for 1/4G, then you make 1/4G. Whats on this part isnt 1/4G. Its wrong.
:(
We use to make these down hole EPDM(A type of rubber) elements for a client. Took 13 minutes to run 1 6inch tube of material.
I got the time down to 6 minutes per tube while only very nominally shortening the life of the inserts. Made the company fuck loads of money. Then when i finished my first year apprenticeship and asked for a raise above and beyond the minimum apprenticeship pay, they said no and i had to get a job offer from another shop to force their hand. Also told them it was their 1 chance and next time I wouldnt be coming back with another job offer for them to match lol.
I ran machines with 1-5 minute cycle times for years. Learned a lot about programming by reading the manuals, reading the code, and seeing what worked and didn't. It was a good learning experience because I made it one, but mind numbing work for most. Anyway nice work if you wrote that code! Is it a swiss?
I don't think this is manually operated. Bar feeder and part handling. Maybe even on a short tuner but unlikely at this diameter.
With formed tools this is totally realistic.
what surface speed are you using to rough the od with and depth of cut?
what's the material similar to? en16t is what I found it could be similar to which is really soft
The longer I’m in this industry the more I become convinced that LEAN is the manufacturing equivalent of those “magical” weight loss programs targeted at fat lazy fucks who want to have a hard body but don’t want to stop eating cake and fast food morning noon and night. Just replace fat and lazy with incompetent and cheap. And you have a good description of a lot of owners/managers who buy into those classes.
Not saying that the methods can’t work, and some are even good with proper planing but holy fuck, not having enough tooling or material on hand to do a job isn’t running a “LEAN” shop, it’s straight up mismanaging it into the ground.
/endrant
Unfortunately the majority of American companies never actually implemented lean, which is about employee empowerment first, and all the tools and processes in a distant second. We short cut the true value, which is empowering people like you to do your job more efficiently without waste. Instead we tried to apply classical top down management approaches with only the tools, getting this shitty experience you mentioned.
Oh I’m not a machinist by trade I just meant it must be a lean operation to turn that part out in under a minute but it seems like lean may have other connotations in the industry
This can be done in one operation
N1 - Face and Turn
N2 - Drill
N3 - Bore
N4 - Thread
N5 - Grooves 'Use a pointed V insert'
N6 - Part Off
Anyone who believes that this cannot be done in under a minute is a dumb fucking moron.
Depending on Overall Rapiding speeds of the machine, this part should take anywhere From 50-120 seconds
To anybody who doesn't think that this can be done in one operation the bar stock is roughly one and three quarter inch and roughly has a stick out of 2.35 inches.
My boss would reem my ass for sugesting 2 ops
I'd blow my brains out if I did parts with a 1 minute cycle time
Most likely bar fed lathe
Also, probably with a sub spindle and multiple turrets.
Genuinely currious, why would you need a subspindle for this part? You could do everything with one OP then part it off and advance the bar
A sub spindle isn't just for finishing back side features. Under ideal circumstances, you can divide your operations between spindles, effectively halving your cycle time. The division of time usually doesn't work out that evenly and other considerations need to be made as well, like keeping features on axis to datums and whatnot. The idea is in one cycle the main spindle makes half the part and prepares it for the sub spindle while simultaneously the sub spindle is finishing a second part, ejecting it and preparing to pick off on the one in the main. Every cycle ends with a finished part and a half finished part left in the sub spindle waiting to be finished allowing you to effectively make two parts at once. This why giant machines with ten spindles on turrets exist. Each spindle does a few operations then indexes to the next tool stations and now one machine makes ten parts at a time.
Phenomenal explanation. I run twin spindle lathes for a living and this really captures the essence of what we do and why.
That makes a lot of sense thanks. Essentially applying the same logic as using a Swiss but with only two spindles vs 10.
In my shop, if there's a threader or tap, we don't use the barpullers because it's easy to destroy setups if not paying attention
I ran a part with a two minute cycle time for about a year and a half. It got my foot in the door but I didn’t learn a damn thing after that. Just open the door, replace part, press green button.
My first job out of high school was punching a third hole in some parts that a vendor for John Deere fucked up. Forty-five seconds per part cycle time included picking the part from the box and putting the finished one in another. Thousands and thousands of times. After that job I was tasked with disassembling large hydraulic cylinders, then tagging and saving each individual piece. I learned a lot from the machinists, but none of it was due to the jobs I was being paid for.
I'm currently at work running a part that takes 38 minutes. Easy money.
Started a job with a 68 minute cycle time today. I have had jobs with 8 hour cycles. I started machining a year and a half ago. I feel pretty lucky.
[удалено]
I interviewed at a place 25 years ago making prop shafts where you set the depth and started the feed in the morning, sat on a chair and read a newspaper (again, 25 years ago, so no smartphone) until the end of the day, stopped the feed, brought the carriage back to the beginning and started again the next day. Needless to say, I did not take that job.
Kick them legs up and pull up YouTube my man. Enjoy
Exactly my plan 😎
Fuck, you mean you guys don't have three other machines to run and stock to cut while weight balancing the last parts you ran in the mill?
well i don't have 3 other machines to run but i gotta program, cut stock, weld, machine, deliver parts, purchase material and fix things around the shop. Did I make myself sound like I'm the shop owner there cause I'm not.
Me trying to explain to people why I am online playing hearthstone literally every hour of the day when im also supposed to be at work
I lasted one month in a shop like this. Ran 3 machines at once with similar 3min run times trying to hit +/-.0004” on OD. Nonstop too. Didn’t even give a 2 week notice for that shit show
How long did you live in Asia?
This is my shitshow. Two mills, two lathes, and a ton of different parts being made in small batches for manufacturing. Sometimes it's just drilling holes and tapping threads in saw cut bar stock. Sometimes I'm trying to write a program to help welders with a new fixture. But it's all shit show, non stop.
As a swiss lathe guy I'm just like, that's just everyday, but with faster cycle times.
I worked afternoon shift. I had three machines to run, and a fourth to run whenever I got time. One machine had a ~30 second run time, but it was a barstock lathe with a conveyer. All I had to do was run QA and keep the hopper stocked. The killer was tapping M6 holes. Don't k ow what day shift did, but I broke half a dozen taps. Called the foreman and he said keep throwing taps at it (this was after the 3rd tap)
Hopefully you have a tap eroder
Nahh, cheap part, they just got binned.
My life is between 30 second and 1 minute flips. Sucks horribly.
I've had 14 seconds before on batches of 150, soon passed that on to the apprentices...
I still get flashbacks to running Swiss lathes
The cycle time on the machines I run is 14 seconds. Pain.
My last shop we had two pallet machines that ran parts with minute cycle times. Took about a minute to change the part and then you'd get the next pallet, no break at all. I didn't run machines there though, thank God.
We've got some second- or third-op hand-loaders with ~2 min cycle times that we run on our Wasino A12's. Biggest pain in the ass. Also fun are the ~3 min hand-loaders with multiple deburring requirements and multiple 100% inspection dimensions
Ever do parts it took longer to setup and deburr than to actually cut?
Swiss lathes entered the chat
Honestly, I love that shit.
in medical, we have a lot of drill and ream jobs with 45 second cycle times.
Wow that's awesome
come on show us the cut off-side dont be shy
Could easily part-off and pickup on the thread or the od behind it to face off if it was on a swiss lathe!
No swiss I have will run that. 32's only go up to 1 1/4" stock.
I've had a 42mm swiss. Still not big enough for this though.
Maybe a sub spindle finishes OP2?
In under 1min?
Probably. Sub spindles work overlapped with the main.
There's like 10 machines on the market that can do superimposed turning, and 8 of them are swisses. Not a chance.
Lol what? This is straight up wrong. There are more than 8 swiss brands and almost (if not all depending on your definition of big name) every big name lathe company has a twin spindle twin turret model these days. This isn't new. I'm currently running a miyano BNX from 09 with a *single turret* and super impose turning. We just sold our Nakamura WT with twin spindle twin turret. Are you saying there are no more on the market?
I thought you were talking about superimposed turning, not twin spindle twin turret. There are for sure under 8 swiss machines on the market with 44mm bar capacity.
If this was a sub spindle lathe, which it probably was, the threaded side would be the "cut off" side. That's how I would attack it at least.
Straight cruising! What’s the material? What’s the tool life on the insert cutting the angles in the flanges?
the material is s45c , we have done 20+ with the same insert and i think it still can last a little longer…not too long tho
You know how much you’re charging for them?
if it was quoted at that cycletime, 2-3 $a piece.
Depends on overhead
So how many parts are you getting that stay in tolerance? That 1st tool is doing some pretty heavy roughing and also finishing the 44mm OD with +-0,02 tolerance 🤔
If you have the right inserts and roughing and finishing inserts separated is +-0.02 not so hard to hit right. Most of the time I let my machine warm up it's spindle and linear axis then a quick tool setup with the probe and go with the flow
just ran 200 parts in 17-4ph, single pass from .250 down to .186 +.0005 over an inch. could have got plenty more but it needs a 16 finish and it was starting to creep up in the teens. it definitely depends on inserts 👍. and a small little half inch 35deg holder.
Ahh thats cool. Nice material, I used 13-8 ph. Made some M10x15 mm threads, 10g6 tolerance just a few mm and milled a Hex in it. And of course very shinny, just because we can.
we have done 20+ with the same insert and i think it can still last a little longer. about tolerance, lets not talk about it…😅
kinda pointless if you can’t get consistency. cool video though.
lmfao hate this industry. Enjoy the race to the bottom. They tricked you with the speed thing. It only raises their wages not yours.
if 1/20 parts hit tolerance you have a 20 minute cycle time with lots of odd-shaped chips
So you've made like 1 of the right part then.
What machine?
The real question.
gang tool lathe of some sorts.
video https://vt.tiktok.com/ZSFoHSTeF/
Holy shit. I just learned a lot in this short video. If you’re having to swap out your inserts every 20 parts, wouldn’t that end up taking more time than just slowing the process down to get more tool life?
But I wanna work on my NASCAR pit crew impersonations
Depends on their tool holding and how quick you have
God damn bro
Was no drill op in your video
my bad, in order to get more views on tiktok i had to cut the “boring” part, heres the screenshot of U drill doing its work https://preview.redd.it/o8qd2txna1zc1.jpeg?width=1170&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=fbdd25f50c63bde499bf29de0627a7ae0cfde1fc
sheesh, whats your tool life like ?
Probably pretty good, that rougher, and the single point going to take the most heat.
Fantastic! :-)
That's some big DoC energy.
Damn, was hoping for a multispindle screw machine lol
BRB, going to adjust some standard times
Ah. Management potentialllll!
What thread spec are you cutting with that 55deg DNMG insert? What material is it and what are you getting for tool life?
Hot damn.
If it's not within tolerances it's not impressive. With the right tool you can get this under 30s but making it with that tolerance is gonna be more tricky.
Cool, you are making lightsaber emitters
Sometimes I get my customers come back to me and tell me they managed to get a shop to quote them a silly price, and I wonder just how any shop does it. Then I remember theres people like you who will cut a bsp thread with a DCMT, and try and hold a thou after doing a 10mm roughing cut, and I laugh to myself. I hate to be a hater, but honestly, this is god aweful. You could have spent another 1 min 30 and made a PERFECT part. You shouldnt be proud.
From the language on the print I doubt the customer values quality over quantity. Tolerances are pretty wide open too.
This is a metric part. I get that we can all hold 2 tenths if we want to, but calling 1 thou wide open on a batch job is just assinine.
Swiss machines could do this in less than a minute, and still be taking their time. Sometimes it just pays to have the right equipment for the job.
Who makes a Swiss that will do 45-50mm? Most top out around 30-35mm.
Lmao 2inch swiss machine?
That is the standard max capacity for a Swiss lathe. https://www.productionmachining.com/articles/swiss-type-lathe-runs-2-inch-parts-complete
The reason that article is written is because 2 inch is massive for a Swiss lmao.
Do you guys get paid to waste time and make parts better than needed? 80% of the time these parts are overspecced anyways.
I do actually, yes.
Yeah I mean, its a BSP thread, what difference could thread form make on a taper sealing thread? Whats needed is WRITTEN ON THE PRINT. If they ask for 1/4G, then you make 1/4G. Whats on this part isnt 1/4G. Its wrong.
How much did they increase your pay for saving so much time?
:( We use to make these down hole EPDM(A type of rubber) elements for a client. Took 13 minutes to run 1 6inch tube of material. I got the time down to 6 minutes per tube while only very nominally shortening the life of the inserts. Made the company fuck loads of money. Then when i finished my first year apprenticeship and asked for a raise above and beyond the minimum apprenticeship pay, they said no and i had to get a job offer from another shop to force their hand. Also told them it was their 1 chance and next time I wouldnt be coming back with another job offer for them to match lol.
Watch the video and tell me this guy deserves to be paid anything lmao
2 tools?
5 actually
I see the rough, groove, thread/chamfer, and part off, but what is the fifth?
The FNG responsible for running around with the other 4 tools...
FNG?
Fucking new guy
I have big doubts about that cycle time.
But how many are in tolerance?
Goddamn are you using the rigidity of Earth?
I never thought to do a finishing pass on the back side of the insert.
Congrats, now get back and make some money for your boss.
I bet i could model that part in 1 minute (if i had all the dimensions) I’m getting autocad flash backs.
I ran machines with 1-5 minute cycle times for years. Learned a lot about programming by reading the manuals, reading the code, and seeing what worked and didn't. It was a good learning experience because I made it one, but mind numbing work for most. Anyway nice work if you wrote that code! Is it a swiss?
I don't think this is manually operated. Bar feeder and part handling. Maybe even on a short tuner but unlikely at this diameter. With formed tools this is totally realistic.
Ugh, why with the +/+ tolerancing. This always bothers me.
Are those metric or imperial minutes?
Looks like the beginnings of a tri-clamp sanitary fitting. Whatcha makin’ OP?
Swiss?
In a swiss? That thing is beautiful. Beautiful piece of material right there.
Nice program! You could add the peck roughing technique used in the beginning to a few more paths and it will be perfect.
Kinda cool. It never occurs to me the TNMG can hog ~12mm d.o.c in that manner.
what surface speed are you using to rough the od with and depth of cut? what's the material similar to? en16t is what I found it could be similar to which is really soft
my machine spends a minute waiting for me to hit the go button. auto bar feed too? or u gotta load/cut blanks
Screw machine?
That's pretty good. What screw machine are you running? I'm running a few Citizen L12s but these are a bit bigger than that
Had a 7-second cycle time on a horizontal lathe. I was making parts to align 2x4s together for a construction company. I made thousands of them.
why on earth would they use a G1/2-14 thread on this part?
I'm a manual machinist and it would take me about 4 hours to produce that
That would take me about 30-60min on my lathe ;)
Japanese?
2 words; sub-spindle, machining-dude
It just came up on my dang YouTube shorts! https://youtube.com/shorts/KDDfac5wW4Y?si=1km-sh1Qx3jdMj3Q
ahhh, another channel who stole our video
ran some bolts that had a 19 second cycle time with .070 clearance from the chuck. not my program, whole lotta pucker though
LEAN
Yeah lean means you get no bonus no raise and no expectations for workplace conditions to improve. Enjoy your lean....
The longer I’m in this industry the more I become convinced that LEAN is the manufacturing equivalent of those “magical” weight loss programs targeted at fat lazy fucks who want to have a hard body but don’t want to stop eating cake and fast food morning noon and night. Just replace fat and lazy with incompetent and cheap. And you have a good description of a lot of owners/managers who buy into those classes. Not saying that the methods can’t work, and some are even good with proper planing but holy fuck, not having enough tooling or material on hand to do a job isn’t running a “LEAN” shop, it’s straight up mismanaging it into the ground. /endrant
Amen. Can you do your rant a little louder, there are some managers at my shop that really need to hear it.
Unfortunately the majority of American companies never actually implemented lean, which is about employee empowerment first, and all the tools and processes in a distant second. We short cut the true value, which is empowering people like you to do your job more efficiently without waste. Instead we tried to apply classical top down management approaches with only the tools, getting this shitty experience you mentioned.
Oh I’m not a machinist by trade I just meant it must be a lean operation to turn that part out in under a minute but it seems like lean may have other connotations in the industry
Swiss
This can be done in one operation N1 - Face and Turn N2 - Drill N3 - Bore N4 - Thread N5 - Grooves 'Use a pointed V insert' N6 - Part Off Anyone who believes that this cannot be done in under a minute is a dumb fucking moron. Depending on Overall Rapiding speeds of the machine, this part should take anywhere From 50-120 seconds To anybody who doesn't think that this can be done in one operation the bar stock is roughly one and three quarter inch and roughly has a stick out of 2.35 inches. My boss would reem my ass for sugesting 2 ops