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Whats your tolerencing, part size, quanity etc
also whats a rough description of your parts, AADCO came up with aprons and safty glass's
-Jacob
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Hello, I'm the Product Engineer for AADCO Medical, and we're looking to purchase a few 3 axis CNC machines to eliminate outsourcing of our work to China. While we wont be eliminating all of our outsourcing, we can eliminate most of our outsourcing with small part CNC machines. I've been doing research for a few days looking at various CNC machines and machining centers, but have not found anything that really stands out. Some of the Bench-top CNC machines seem like they may work, but I'm worried about how productive//accurate they will be on a full scale production scale. the work area//travel we are looking for would be a minimum of 12"x12", for X and Y, and 8" in the Z direction. Any help or advice is greatly appreciated.
Dave
Whats your tolerencing, part size, quanity etc
also whats a rough description of your parts, AADCO came up with aprons and safty glass's
-Jacob
Unless Otherwise specified our general tolerencing is +-.01 in. But most of our parts have tolerences of +-.005 in, as well as a few parts with +-.001 in press fits. Here at AADCO Medical we also make counterbalanced suspension arms, columns to hang them on, and trolleys and tracks for ceiling mounts. This link of our website shows some decent pictures of one of our arms. About 80% of the parts we make could fit in a 6"x6"x6" space. Some of our column parts are a little bigger, like the base and the support tubes for the columns. The Aluminum extrusions we use are much longer and will continue to be sourced from China. Thanks for the suggestions so far, the mikini 1610L is looking pretty good, looking forward to any more support you may have.
Dave
The Haas Machines are amazing, we ahd a 5 axis CNC at the college I went to. But unfortunately their price point is much higher than we can afford right now, unless the Haas machines are 3x productive as any CNC thats around 15,000$ Should've mentioned that earlier I guess, but our boss is not willing to spend more than 20,000$ on a single machine. But like I said earlier, the Mikini looks promising...
It looks to me like the Haas Super Mini, or the Super Mini II will do exactly what you want to do.
They have plenty of travel and will hold very tight tolerances.
Depends on how much you want to spend. Haas are ok, not known for ultra precision, but very reliable. Then you could go up or down from there. You want long term good precision, step up to a Mori Seiki or something close. Stay away from the "old" US names, none of them are what they used to be. Last thing your going to want is a little hobby type machine if your relying on them for production.
Right? Which is what I'm afraid of, theres lots of machines that look like they maybe ideal, but for 15 grand, I'm skeptical if any CNC is ideal for full scale production... Funny you mentioned Mori Seiki, I was talking with them before I posted this yesterday. Still waiting on a quote from them to see how feasible they are as an option.
With the dollar/Yen exchange right now, none of the Japanese machines are cheap right now. It's gonna be expensive, especially now that they have canceled the Dura Center machine. The conversational programming (CAPS) works pretty well, especially with the DXF import function. You might also check Okuma, they are pretty good as well. Best advise I can give you is to call other shops with equipment in your area, and ask how the service is on XYZ machine. It changes throughout the country, and a dealer can kill a machine brand quicker than outsourcing. We have Okumas (6), Mori's, (13)Hurco's(had 12+,down to 5 or so) and a couple Haas(3). Okuma parts suck big time. Hurco has no local support at all, Mori has been good all the way around, and the three Haas machines we have have never really needed anything.
I talked to our President and Vice President and convinced them that we need a Vertical CNC center. We have the budget for a quality used or pretty nice new machine, our budget is roughly 40-60K. After doing research, talking to some vendors and getting some feedbak from you, ideally we'd like to purchase a Mori Seiki. In general I've heard a consensus that US machines lack the precision and productivity of Asian machine manufacturers. Unfortunately for us Mori Seiki machines go for 100K plus easy new. I've been doing some research and finding prospective used models. I was just curious if there was any other exemplary name brand machine companies that we should be looking for to ensure a quality product, with good customer support, and an availability for replacement parts if the need arises. Tolerencing to +-.005 in is a must for almsot all our parts, and about 20% of our parts have some sort of tolerence of +-.001 inches. A pallet loader is a must as we need to have maximum efficiency. as for table size, I have listed it below in the thread, but it tends to be smaller than the base model for most CNC centers, which is ok.
Sure, plenty of them.
For small with pallet change- Brother, Fanuc Robodrill, Kira, Kitamura
A short list of other top machines..
Makino, Okuma, Kitamura, Mazak-maybe, newer HAAS should be fine, OKK, Enshu, and i'm sure there are a few i'm forgetting...
Awesome, what you gave me is exactly what I'm looking for. Helps cut out a lot of the time that I might of wasted looking elsewhere. Your knowledge and experience is greatly appreciated.
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