you know, if I had a full size lathe at teh shop I would be doing one of these right now.
I figured out how to make it snap back into the parts grabber postition after the 2nd op it done.
use G_code and hav the puller set on lets say the 5c collet holder, then have the g code to run a angle or backwards radius to lock it back into position.
While some may thing your slowing spindle time way up buy doing somthign like this, think of it this way, if you set it up and a hands free operation,, which frees up an operator to do something else.
Case in point was that 6 foot bar feed I attached to a 4th axis on a mill. sure a lathe would fly through the 1st op. and part off, but then you ahve to have someone load parts into the 4th and hit the button every time.
this way I used the rotary table as a lathe for the front od and then it did all the mill work after that, on cut off a .250 endmill leaving a smal tit in the center( running the 4th while it was cutting) then another tool oriented and shearing the tit and part off, then positioning open collet and feed out close collet and you sart all over again.
finished parts were laps on 320 paper to removed the sheard tit.
someone loaded the bar feed once every 3-4 hours.  |