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Thread: Machinery Relocation.
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4th August 2014, 09:55 PM #1SENIOR MEMBER
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Machinery Relocation.
Do any of you guys have any interest, in seeing some of the jobs I get up too?
I have this sweat job to relocate an Index MS52 6 spindle 27 axis CNC lathe. I relocated 6 of these late 2012, when one of my best ever customers went under. 4 stayed here in Melbourne, 2 others I packed up and sent to the U.S.A
This one, the 52mm bar capacity, I'm sending him home to Germany. There's containers, O.D transport, big cranes and forklifts involved. Its a boys and toys job.
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I've only just started ripping it apart, all the peripherals, bar feeder, coolant system, I have to stuff into a 40 foot container. The main head of the machine gets packed on a 20ft flat rack, and I'll vacuum bag and put a crate around it.
I have to photo document it for my German client. And because its going over there, I can talk about it here for a change.
I found a video of its little brother. This is from the same family of machines. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UdnaTSSZndI
Regards Phil.
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4th August 2014, 09:59 PM #2Philomath in training
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Pity it's leaving our sunny shores but interesting stuff never the less. (Perhaps we will have to start calling you "Machinewhisperer")
Michael
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4th August 2014, 11:41 PM #3SENIOR MEMBER
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Thats the state of our industry. Imagine any sort of hydraulic / pneumatic fitting / widget, this thing willl drop one off every 9 seconds. There just isn't that volume left here anymore. Melb customer that has just sold it, only turned in on 3 months in 12. I only put it where it is about Oct / Nov 2012. That covered current contracts, that used to take several CNC and cam auto lathes working round the clock.
Regards Phil.
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4th August 2014, 11:55 PM #4SENIOR MEMBER
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I started this last Wednesday, the young bloke you can see in this picture.
https://www.woodworkforums.com/attach...2&d=1407148503
He's the son of an other client. His old man said "take him and teach him some thing" The old man even offered to pick up his wages.Thats day 1. Day one is always boring and mundane, its mostly cleaning, these machine's run straight oil, not soluble. Covered in swarf, you have to get them back to scratch. That means pulling on Nitrile glooves and getting it squared away.
He pulled the pin end of day one. Not been back since.
-Phil
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4th August 2014, 11:57 PM #5future machinist
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- Mar 2008
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- nowra
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Wow that's an interesting Machine
BETTER TO HAVE TOOLS YOU DON'T NEED THAN TO NEED TOOLS YOU DON'T HAVE
Andre
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5th August 2014, 12:35 AM #6
Nice machine, I could use one of them...
Just a dumb question, how do they label the 27 axes in the code... X,Y,Z,A,B,C ... etc there's only 26 letters in the alphabet.. we run out of letters
Ray
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5th August 2014, 10:08 AM #7GOLD MEMBER
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5th August 2014, 10:53 AM #8SENIOR MEMBER
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G/day Phil, I watched the yoowie and couldn't help but think that if you had of read the manual first it is likely that you would have been able to fly the thing to it's new destination
shed
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5th August 2014, 06:08 PM #9GOLD MEMBER
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- Melbourne, Australia.
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5th August 2014, 07:51 PM #10SENIOR MEMBER
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You could have had this one for cheap, about a 1/6th of its new price. It was $2m in 2006.
Lots of X & Z's. 8 of each. The station positions don't change but the spindle's do. Some positions have multiple X/Z slides aranged around them.
Each station you basically write a program for that, then run them all at once. Its posible to run only an individual spindle at any of the 6 positions.
Regards Phil
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5th August 2014, 08:06 PM #11Senior Member
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- Mar 2012
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- Trundle NSW
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Hi Phil,
Just for interest what is the ususl lifespan of a machine like that, assuming its being used constantly. And if well cared for to they just wear till they no longer hold adequate tolerances or is it more of a software/hardware issue. Can you and do you recondition them when they wear out or do owners just trade up.
As I look at my 60-70s manual lathes I wonder what is the future of these high tech CNC machinery in 40-50years.
Thanks
Mark
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5th August 2014, 08:59 PM #12SENIOR MEMBER
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G'day Mark.
I'm not real sure, theres only ever been 6 of these in the country. Until late 2012 they were side by side out in Hoppers Crossing. I gave the Germans a hand when they were new, then moved the lot of them, when they went under. This one is on its third installation.
I'd guess 15 - 20 years. The 840D Seimens is still a current platform. That will have support for about that time. Mechanically, you could keep them going for ever. Theres some incredible engineering in them. 3 of the 32mm machines remain in Melbourne, side by side, in a company that makes "push to conect" plumbing fittings, for domestic plumbing. They run 3 shifts, I was there earlier today. They are talking about going to 7 days a week. All of it export for the States.
I can see those machines still being there in 10 years. They all run straight cutting oil, which helps. Fire is the biggest risk. That all have Co2 extinguiser systems on them. (I have an other customer, with a different machine, that has a 17 minute CCTV video of their machine on fire in the middle of the night, until the fire brigade got there).
I gave some of the slides a tickle up on those 3 machines. They had ceramic metal sprayed retainers. It wasn't so much wear as things moving as in a crash or broken tool.
I'd never recondition one, theres just not enough hours in a week. But you can get in done in Europe. Done plenty of maintenance on them. The spindles and bar feed rotate. Every thing needs to rotate with it. Power and feedback to the spindles, hydraulics for clamp / unclamp, profibus for switchs. It all runs straight up the guts of the bar feeder, then spins 6 x 60 deg, then spins back to un-wind its self. Lots to go wrong in there.
Theres a 12 path rotary hydraulic coupling in the end of the bar feeder, just to pass fluid though to the collets. I'll have some pictures in the next few days. I was hoping to pull the bar feeder today, but all we did, was to just make a mess cleaning out all the coolant / hydraulic tanks.
I've been getting better life out of those rotary seals by getting them custom CNC'ed machined by a mob call Chesterton Custom Seals in Perth. They have lasted longer than the Euro originals, at a fraction of the price.
Regards Phil.
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5th August 2014, 09:20 PM #13Pink 10EE owner
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- Aug 2008
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- near Rockhampton
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Here is a vid of a multispindle lathe in action for those wondering what actually is a multispindle lathe... The vid is not of an Index though..
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=om613Cfp0AgLight red, the colour of choice for the discerning man.
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5th August 2014, 09:26 PM #14SENIOR MEMBER
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- Oct 2007
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- Sydney
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I think you're right about the electronics Mark, from that perspective I'm guessing, maybe 20 years? Probably less. One channel of my Heidenhain DRO wasn't working when I got it, hasn't been supported by the manufacturer for years and the verdict was to throw it out. No manuals, no information, nothing. It was just fortunate that it came from "my era" in electronics with fairly basic ICs and I was able to use the good channel to help me diagnose the fault with the bad channel, but there's no way it would be commercially viable to have somebody fix it. That was only a $1000 DRO, but I guess the same thing will happen with a CNC machine. I wonder who Phil uses to repair ancient electronics in older CNC machines? Hey maybe if things go turtle at work there's hope for me yet, and I've found my niche back with my electronics cap back on
Phil what was the approximate cost of each of these cells when first purchased? Sadly I think you're going to be seeing more of this type of work in the coming years as manufacturers who were supporting the auto industry close up shops.
Vacuum packing is a good idea. We both know what happens when they're not!
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5th August 2014, 09:39 PM #15Intermediate Member
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- Jul 2012
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- Malvern East
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Thanks Phil
Thanks so much for this Phil it is a really interesting topic to me having done it many times before on various index cam autos the lovely thing about all index machines to this day i suppose is the replace able slides for each axis
Index certainly know there stuff that machine you could budget on 10 years trouble free and then a light rebuild of the slides and screws and the most troublesome the cables
Pretty sad when a bloke walks away after one day
Great topic
Bruce
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