Amazing CNC Machining

[Darrell]

We have an old Jet lathe at work (long bed, I forget how long), and a Bridgeport mill. We don't even have DROs on them, it's all done old school. I am better on the lathe than on the mill, I don't get to use them enough to be really good with them. I'm presently doing a project for one of the production departments, and trying like the dickens to not waste metal--already made a really big mistake on two 5"x12"x1/2" thick aluminum plates. Luckily it's scrap so it hasn't really cost anything yet. I'm trying to sorta reinvent a machine that costs thousands of dollars, they've let me spend about $300 on parts so far.

One of the other maintenance sections took our LeBlond Makino lathe, which used to be a very nice machine. Like everything else they touch, they've managed to pretty much trash it.

[HTRN]

Luckily it's scrap so it hasn't really cost anything yet.

Ha! Get used to throwing stuff in the scrap bin - tuesday I had to shitcan 4 12x16x1" aluminum baseplates, that were waterjetted out, because the stop shifted in the Hurco. Didn't give the material cost a second thought - the waterjet time though, considering I was working against a hard deadline that day(had the ano guy coming to pick them up, and needed to fill the order, was another story.

[Cobar]

I remember you saying something about learning Hurcos, HTRN. We have some at the new place that hired me. Any suggestions on learning the specific besides reading the manuals? Only CNC machines I've worked with were Haas.

[HTRN]

Youtube has a bunch of videos that are halfway decent. The manuals suck - it's like they were written by a lawyer; Best option is somebody showing you, a coupla hours will do wonders. My sum total of programming training on "Winmax" was two minutes right before the guy went out the door, I just started fooling around with it from there.

[Cobar]

Good to know. These guys seem to be all about training so I don't think that will be lacking.

[HTRN]

The hardest part is going to be wrapping your head around the "logic" of conversational programming, especially if you're a Gcode guy. It took me a good solid two months of using it before I didn't have to think about what to do.

[Cobar]

The hardest part is going to be wrapping your head around the "logic" of conversational programming, especially if you're a Gcode guy. It took me a good solid two months of using it before I didn't have to think about what to do.

Yeah I pretty much just know G code and got to use mastercam and gibbscam a bit. How close is the hurco conversational programming to haas? I've not really used it yet, but I should get a chance to mess with it in a couple of weeks.

[HTRN]

I never used the convo prog in the Haas's. Most of the machines I ran didn't have it, and the ones that did, was pretty primitive(think mid 90s machines)