Uses of a Machine Shop and Equipment
 

Hi, I'm the founder of my robotics team that plans to start its rookie year in 2016. We just got access to our local universities machine shop with:

• Lathe
• CNC Mill
• Vertical/Horizontal Bandsaw
• Cold Saw
• Surface grinder
• Drill Press

My new mentors are wondering why would need all the machine shop equipment for. Could any give specific examples of what you would use each of these equipment for? If you could link pictures of specific parts made from a Mill or Lathe, that would be great too.

Re: Uses of a Machine Shop and Equipment
 

We use our lathe to make shafts for our custom gearboxes, intakes, and elevator roller assemblies this year. The lathe was only really necessary to cut the grooves for retaining rings. We used a mill to make our elevator rails (which we could have used a drill press for) and our intakes, which had weight reduction hole patterns and slots for the motor to mount to so it was easier to tension chain. I can upload pictures or CAD files of the parts later today.

Re: Uses of a Machine Shop and Equipment
 

Find mentors who know how to use the equipment - they'll also know what it can and can't be used for. The first place to look for mentors is right there at the machine shop - who runs the shop? Who uses it already? See if you can arrange some classes in using the equipment.

At an abstract level, with this sort of equipment and the knowledge of how to use it, you should be able to build components and subsystems and systems that fit together in clean, robust, and lightweight fashion. For many teams (my own included), match drilling pieces is sometimes the highest precision we can achieve.

Your biggest problem with all this equipment is likely to be the desire to use it just because you can - spending dozens or hundreds of hours on an item that's not significantly better than a COTS item.

Re: Uses of a Machine Shop and Equipment
 

You'll use these two a lot:

Drill Press
Band saw/cold saw

This is very useful, but many teams get by without it:

Lathe

Less useful, but many teams get by without it:

CNC mill

Not commonly used in my experience:

surface grinder (typically use a bench disc sander instead)

Re: Uses of a Machine Shop and Equipment
 

Does the CNC mill listed have a motorized rotary table or manual indexer?

There can be overlap with CNC capability between mills and lathes depending on how many accessories are on them.

For example live tooling and sub-spindles on a CNC lathe verus a vertical mill with a rotary table.

Re: Uses of a Machine Shop and Equipment
 

Alright, here's what I've got:


CNC mills are beautiful for sheet metal fabrication, if you have someone who is willing to cad.

Lathes can be used to shave material off of axles/shafts that are too wide. They can also be used to tap or drill holes into axles/shafts.

Horizontal/vertical band saws are mainly used to make simple cuts (i.e.. Cutting channel to length, making simple sheet metal/polycarbonate components, etc.)

Drill presses are good for making holes that don't have to be very precise (prototype parts, for example)

Surface grinders can be used to remove sharp edges/burs from material that has been cut

Cold saws (from what I understand) are basically fancy chop saws, which can be used to cut material (channel, HDPE blocks) to length.

Re: Uses of a Machine Shop and Equipment
 

I like this point. Yes, it's great to have these tools, but one has to justify whether it would be better to use COTS than custom-made. We have to consider more than just the cost of the materials -- yes, custom broaching or milling or turning can save money, but you have to consider the "cost" of training your students to perform these tasks, the actual amount of time it takes to turn around one of these tasks, the time needed to make spares in case something breaks in competition, etc.

I've learned that there are many advantages of using COTS, and I intend to put a much larger focus on using COTS parts (including the KoP drive frame, if possible) next year to reduce build time.

Re: Uses of a Machine Shop and Equipment
 

Why would you use cnc mills for sheet metal fabrication? Cnc lasers/routers and water jets are way more suitable for sheet metal fabrication.

You'd rather use the cnc mill for stuff like tubing and solid milled parts.

Re: Uses of a Machine Shop and Equipment
 

Hi-

All those tools are very relevant during a FRC build season.

Specific examples;


Turning spacers for drive train use on a lathes seems to be the most common part we turn. We'll also use the tail stock to drill and/or broach perfectly concentric holes; obviously a critical feature for rotating components. Yeah, there are other ways to do this, but the lathe is almost always the best tool for it.



We (team 95) will often use a CNC plasma cutter to 'blank' brackets and side plates, and a bridgeport style CNC mill to cut tighter tolerence features like bearing pockets, hole patterns etc.


the mill is also useful for making brackets in thicker materials; these parts (on the vice) were done on a manual mill, but could have just as easily been done on the CNC. They required a lot of material removal and a couple of loose tolerance fits. hogging that material out with hand drills, hack saws or making the parts out of several pieces would have been a huge pain.


CNC mills are great for repetitive parts. These bars were done on a CNC mill. Each feature had some tightish tolerances, and doing them all 'by hand' on a manual mill with DRO just wouldn't be reasonable.

The other tooling, like bandsaws, drill presses and cold/chop saws are so basic in our build process that I don't think we've bothered documenting their use much. They're indispensable.

Take a look at the Robot Showcase sub-forum, in particular dig around for 'build threads', where teams detail the build process for their robots. They often have good photos and discussion of parts being made. All the photos I've used are from the Team 95 Hard at Work threads from the 2014/15 seasons.

Re: Uses of a Machine Shop and Equipment
 

What R.C. said - waterjet, laser, router all make more sense for sheet metal parts.

No - lathes are lathes. Mills are mills. There is some small overlap, but they do very different tasks.

No - you're better off with a deburring tool or sander. Surface grinders are common in machine shops, but I struggle to think of where they would be necessary for FRC. They're used to create very smooth, and flat surfaces - often at very tight tolerances.

They're normally designed to cut ferrous material, normally at slow (<100 RPM) speeds. More or less a chop saw for steel or hard materials. Less than optimal for cutting aluminum, but they'll work.

Re: Uses of a Machine Shop and Equipment
 

I am assuming that they don't have a laser/water jet cutting sponsor and that they only have access to what they have in shop.

Re: Uses of a Machine Shop and Equipment
 

Lasers and waterjet cutters are not on the list of available machines.

Re: Uses of a Machine Shop and Equipment
 

Okay, now I realize my mistake... *facepalms at my stupidity*

I fixed my original comment.

Re: Uses of a Machine Shop and Equipment
 

Thats why RC recommended using the CNC mill for tubing and solid parts :)

Re: Uses of a Machine Shop and Equipment
 

CONGRATS!! and thank you for starting a new team! It's not easy to get sponsors with machine shop and have access to machines. I am sure many newer teams feel this pain.

All these machines are great, not just of robotics, for anyone who wants to pursue engineering. Some of our team members who have graduated have an advantage when they join college clubs, they breeze in the workshop training and a step ahead of the crowd in automation and building. Our team has the basic drill press, hand held power tools and small bandsaws and we are managing with them. Just think of a student who learns (or trained) on CNC? Its not what you can do with the machine to build a robot, its one's imagination and perseverance to design and build something. I am sure students will find ways to use these machines.

Re: Uses of a Machine Shop and Equipment
 

I think the broader point that RC and Chris are making is that while a mill can perform precision cuts in sheet material, it is not the correct tool to do large scale "sheet metal" work in the conventional sense, and that with this resource set, a predominantly sheet metal robot would be a poor choice. The CNC mill works much better with a fabrication approach centered around extrusions, small gussets, thick, heavily pocketed plates, and complex parts milled from solid than a series of thin sheet parts, especially since you don't mention having a precision brake to do bends either.

Re: Uses of a Machine Shop and Equipment
 

I understand that but in no way does a cnc mill beautifully makes sheet metal parts...

Also why would you recommend the cnc mill to make sheet metal parts if a brake isn't on the list? I guess you can make just flat parts but at that point you might well just buy the gussets from vexpro or other vendors.

I feel the team here needs to understand what machines they got and how to combine their machining capabilities with cots components. We have both a cnc mill and router in house. We rarely produce true sheet metal parts (bent) due to the fact we can't consistently bend the parts.

Re: Uses of a Machine Shop and Equipment
 

I would suggest you stay away from the surface grinder. They are used to make high precision flat surfaces, and they are easy to mess up if you don't have proper training. Machine shops don't like it when you mess up their machines.

On a related note, make sure you know exactly how to use these tools and get training before you use them. All of these tools have the potential to damage themselves and the operator if used incorrectly.

Re: Uses of a Machine Shop and Equipment
 

1st find a good junk yard.

You can make just about anything you need for FRC on those tools but you will need stock. Something you will be doing a lot in future will be to weigh time making custom parts vs buying them. If you can get good raw material for free (hence the junk yard) it cuts down on the material costs and assuming labor is free you end up with a ~free part. If you do get a good relationship with a junk yard you should get comfortable with using steel. It's usually easier to find for free.

This goes into the main point that the more raw materials you can get donated from anywhere the more ~free parts you can make, especially simple things.


2nd get designing.

When you have custom capabilities like this it can be easier in the beginning to design things that are hard to assemble and sometimes impossible. The best way to avoid doing this in the middle of build season is to start practicing now. A good way to start may be to try to re-design your current robot with these tools in mind.


3rd Take a look.

Ask to sit in on the tools being used for as long as you can. It will give you a better understanding of what the limitations are and what kind of designs cost more time.


4th Ask an expert

First obviously the machinists who man the shop. But don't forget the people designing things that get made in there. They will be a great resource in getting to know how to design for the tools.

Remember that the biggest cost to you will likely be time from now on if you can get donations.

Try to design things that don't require the CNC. This I've found can help with machining time and will make you more resilient in case something you were depending on is not available right when you need it.

Re: Uses of a Machine Shop and Equipment
 

A better bet is probably to approach local metals and plastics distributors. Junk yards are unpredictable at best in what they'll have, just do to their nature, and you generally won't know too many specifics on the exact alloys you'll be getting, important information for all parts of the fabrication process. Material distributors, on the other hand, are in the business of knowing exactly what their product is and how to use it. Look for places that offer custom cutting -- these companies generally end up with scrap cutoffs which are generally too small to be easily sold, but suit the needs of FRC perfectly. The easiest donation to get is something that would've been thrown away otherwise.

Re: Uses of a Machine Shop and Equipment
 

Would smaller (say roughly 1' x 1') sheet metal parts be appropriate for a CNC mill? Something like a side support on a manipulator or shooter? I ask because our team may be building a shooter during the offseason and we were hoping to use a CNC mill to cut a structure out of sheet metal.

Re: Uses of a Machine Shop and Equipment
 

You could, the machine can do it , all I'm saying is it shouldn't be the workhorse for sheet stuff. Ex: Our Router should not be used as a mill and vice versa.

Also the sheet can be any size you want, that's dependent on your bed travel. Without knowing your machine and setup I can't give you a good answer.

On the same note, you should just find a local guy and work with them to help you cut your sheet. Who knows they might do it free and help with the robot build season. Quick google: http://www.yellowpages.com/research-...er-jet-cutting

Unsure if any of those are in range.

Re: Uses of a Machine Shop and Equipment
 

The yard I go to doesn't deal with any plastic. :)

I once walked out of there with a 4'x4' sheet of 1/8" thick polycarbonate. I mentioned junk yards because there are easier to approach for donations usually.

The other side is you need to check often and stockpile for it to be effective.

Re: Uses of a Machine Shop and Equipment
 

We own a nice Bridgeport mill equipped with a DRO and what technically qualifies as a metal lathe.
I run the mill almost exclusively. I made pretty much every single machined part on our robot this year excepting the hex axles (which were done in the lathe). It can cut things to within 0.001" of the size you want it to be, provided care is taken and a competent person is running the machine. It can also drill holes in the location you want them to within 0.001".
To my team the mill is far more valuable than the lathe, because the lathe is a really bad one that breaks easily. Generally though, a lathe is very good for spacers and modifications to anything that goes on a shaft. A CNC mill can do a great many things. Getting a nice CAM program for your CAD program could be useful, depending on the situation.

We use the drill press and bandsaw to make gussets for riveting things together on our chassis. Just bandsaw to the right profile, sand it all to make it look nice, and then we drill the holes in the right locations.

We use a chop saw to cut aluminum. It functions somewhat like a cold saw. I believe there are cold saw blades with the right tooth geometry sold for cutting aluminum, but generally a horizontal bandsaw will do you just as well.

Surface grinders are for making surfaces in steel shiny and flat. They can also grind something down accurately to within 0.0001" height. Steel is far less common than aluminum in FRC (for machined parts, at least) so I doubt you'll ever find a use for a surface grinder, unless you want to make jigs or something.

If your university offers courses on machining, have new students take them. They are fantastic resources.

EDIT: Not my team, but an eample of what can be done on a CNC mill (or a manual mill if one is skilled enough): https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-M...480/13%2B-%2B1

Re: Uses of a Machine Shop and Equipment
 

Welcome to FIRST and Chief Delphi

The collage will more than likely require anyone using the equipment to go through a training/safety program. Start now so you can make some practice parts during the off season.

Instead of pictures contact another team and visit them. This way you can see firsthand what can be done. Per the FIRST web site team 1370 is only 25 miles from Dover.
Team 1370
MIDDLETOWN HIGH SCHOOL
Middletown, DE 19709 USA
I tried the link to their web site but it looks like it has been hijacked. I was able to find them on face book and you can email them from there.

Mr. Mike

Re: Uses of a Machine Shop and Equipment
 

You won't learn anything without trying. I would focus on the best method of workholding. This is where I see the most issues. Plan out the workholding and keep it safe. What thickness material do you plan on using? You definitely want to take light cuts to avoid digging into the sheet. I think this is the most risk of a good part yield.


OP,

Your machine shop access sounds great! You will find out how to use the machines in due time. Since you are a rookie team, I would suggest starting with a KoP or Vex Drive base and focus your energy on game piece manipulation (don't forget to consider active intake of game pieces) and scoring.

A simple example I can think of is an active intake wheel for a tote. You could:

1. start with a box tube,
2. drill a hole for a bushing (drill press or mill, depending on accuracy required),
3. press the bushing in (shop press/arbor press),
4. turn down an aluminum shaft to the appropriate length,
5. mill a keyway or broach a keyway (or use a hex shaft that could be turned round to fit in the bushing),
6. mount a drive pulley with a key,
7. drill holes in the end of each end of the shaft to mount machine screws to hold it all together (lathe),
8. machine a motor mount bracket (mill),
9. drill mounting points on the box tube for the motor mount bracket (mill),
10. become amazed at what you can do with such a shop!

The surface grinder is something I don't think you'll ever use, but if you needed something flatter to within a few tenths (0.000[x] inches) that would be your tool.

Re: Uses of a Machine Shop and Equipment
 

Non technical comment/question. Are your mentors non engineering mentors?

Re: Uses of a Machine Shop and Equipment
 

A mill is perfectly able to handle sheet if approached right, about half of all the sheet gussets on out robot were made on a CNC Router(and is by far one of the least stiff machines ever). It just takes some doing. A water jet or laser would be best but some times we need a part NOW.

Re: Uses of a Machine Shop and Equipment
 

One of our sponsors has a large CNC mill. We don't have convenient access to a router, water jet, laser. The mill does fine even if it is a bit of overkill.

We got a small CNC in our shop last season. It is currently more of a learning tool, but is has great potential.

I would love to have a sheet metal break. Ones that can form 1/8 sheet are hard to come buy.

Re: Uses of a Machine Shop and Equipment
 

We don't have a CNC machine of any type, we have a company who vaguely offered us help manufacturing who has a CNC Mill. I'm hoping they will be willing to include us a bit in the manufacturing process or at least let our students observe.

Re: Uses of a Machine Shop and Equipment
 

I would highly recommend this for any out of house production, I always try and bring a student or two over to my work with me when I am making parts for the team and involve them.

Re: Uses of a Machine Shop and Equipment
 

We do it so we don't use up all of our Sponsor's time. He already cuts a large amount of 1/4" plate for us with a waterjet and could take a few days from the time we get him the files to having metal at our shop. The Hurco was pretty good this year for us because we could have parts done the night they needed to be done.

Re: Uses of a Machine Shop and Equipment
 

Yes and No. We have an engineering mentor, but he is a Civil Engineer. Our other mentor (we have 2 right now) is a Non-engineering mentor. The local university also is possibly letting a someone from their Engineering and Physics department to mentor us, but we still have to finalize the details

Re: Uses of a Machine Shop and Equipment
 

I presume you mean a brake; if so, count me in as well. You can break 1/8" aluminum easily enough with a sturdy table, some c-clamps and vice grips.

Re: Uses of a Machine Shop and Equipment
 

Make sure you only use the CNC mill if you know what you are doing. The CNC mill is not the best at manual operation. It would be best to let it be controlled by a computer and let it cut the materials under its own power. Manual operation may throw it off. This happened to us

Re: Uses of a Machine Shop and Equipment
 

This may be true for some CNC mills. Not all CNC mills.
CNC retrofitted manual mills can often still be fine manual mills.

Re: Uses of a Machine Shop and Equipment
 

Could you elaborate on the problems? I was planning on using a CNC as a manual mill with the little dial if we got one, in case I can't learn how to properly set up CAM on the computer in time for build season.

Re: Uses of a Machine Shop and Equipment
 

This is only true if you have a full CNC mill, no retrofitted table. If your mill is strictly CNC I would recommend obtaining a small non CNC one like ours or buying one that is hybrid. If you attempt to manually operate a CNC only mill, you will throw off its calibration. You can always retrofit it to be a CNC hybrid as I call it, which means it can be manual controlled. If it's a hybrid, you may need to do some calibrating after manual operation, like our mill, it may get thrown off a bit by being manually operated. Just make sure to check the manuals and specs and reccomended uses and modifications for that mill type.

How could the use of a jog wheel throw off the calibration of the machine?

Re: Uses of a Machine Shop and Equipment
 

It sounds like they are using a retrofitted mill with handwheels on a through-shaft stepper motor. I would not recommend this process, instead use the machine jog or manually input commands.

Using the jog wheel on a CNC shouldn't be any different than using code.

Re: Uses of a Machine Shop and Equipment
 

If your CNC mill has a control with a user interface like a Haas you can usually put G-code into the mill manually right on that user interface. In some cases, like the Haas, you can even setup some operations without resorting to G-code.

I guess I am old school. For simple operations I prefer G-code. For complex operations I prefer tools like: HSMWorks, BobCAD, MasterCAM (HSMExpress you can get for free to mess with and it works fine for basic operations and it integrates right into SolidWorks Student Version). So since FIRST will give you SolidWorks Student licenses and HSMExpress is free: take a good look at the price of a MasterCAM Student license and if you never did CAM before see if you can justify spending a few thousand dollars on it when you can play around for free.

Uses of a Machine Shop and Equipment
 

What's wrong with homing the machine after manually jogging the axis with a handwheel? A stepper based machine would have to be powered down anyway so running a home command is normal practice.

If the machine was servo based, homing would not be required. It's quite common to see Haas tool room CNC mills with handwheels.

Re: Uses of a Machine Shop and Equipment
 

Personally, I don't know how it happened. All I was told was that our mill is no longer accurate enough to be used. Our mill is retrofitted. It is also not in the best shape as this one is old. From what I can gather someone tried to operate our mill as it was running. My mentor told me the calibration is off. It might not be uncalibrated. It might just be broken. The kids are kinda rough with our machines.

Re: Uses of a Machine Shop and Equipment
 

This is exactly what I was saying. This would be "recalibrating"/homing the machine as I interpreted the previous post.

Re: Uses of a Machine Shop and Equipment
 

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 work.
As for bandsaws, depending on your model and setup, they're typically used to cut wood, thin sheets of metal, and lexan. If it comes with a vacuum, always use the vacuum. It makes cleanup easier.
Do not ever use compressed air to clean machines, the flying debris can injure people.
Tabletop grinding wheels shouldn't be used on aluminum unless designed for it. If it's not throwing sparks then there's something wrong.
Keep your shop clean, and your tools maintained properly, and you shouldn't have any problems.

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.