Chief Delphi - Uses of a Machine Shop and Equipment

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Quote:

Originally Posted by Mschmeh144 (Post 1481008)

Also, don't try to change the rpm speeds on a drill press when it's not running. If you hear gear crunching gut wrenching sounds that means your doing it wrong.

The same is true for mills. With a mill, be careful with the draw bar, they can be broken if you don't know what your doing.

As for the lathe, I cannot offer advice, I have never had the chance to operate one and I most likely will not need to

Also, I have concluded that our mill is just straight up broken. I was making assumptions on things earlier, based on what my mentor has told me.

If you run the mill in CNC mode, make sure you have a dedicated computer that you use for it. That way you will not have to set up settings every time if you switch laptops. Also make sure your laptop can handle it, and connect properly.

Do a few test cuts with the mill to get the feel for it, and practice a few times before you use it for serious

A lot of your advice is tool specific. The manual mills and drill presses at our sponsors shop (college) are all VFD based, we have a Bridgeport CNC retrofit that has a CVT drive. All of these are required to be powered on to change speeds. It's important to get proper training for every tool in the shop.

Re: Uses of a Machine Shop and Equipment

VFDs don't care if they are on or off when you change speed commands. Our mill & lathe or both belt drive. Downright dangerous to change speeds when running. :) As you said you need training on the specific tools.

As to using the manual jog controls rather than learning to CAM, Once you get over the initial hump simple designs (anything you could do with manual jog will fall into this category) are faster than manual methods. You can also get closer to ideal cutting speeds using the CNC functionality. Our CNC guru took trainees from zero to running basic code on the CNC in about 4 hrs.

Autodesk has free CAM software for inventor and the full version is also availble as part of the First sponsorship.