Topic: Our cutting shop - starting to take shape (Read 62795 times)

Passenger · « **Reply #90 on:** January 18, 2012, 06:14:40 PM »

Quote from: mandrel-bends on January 18, 2012, 06:04:24 PM

All of the parts have an array of holes on the outside. The largest diameter of this type would be 8" for current product line. I could expand the couplers up into larger industrial sizes if I had the machinery.

My concern with gantry loader is the waste product. Arent you going to end up with a big rem at end of the blank because you need something to hold onto?

Nope not at all, your waste material is the width of your saw blade.

mandrel-bends · « **Reply #91 on:** January 19, 2012, 04:16:49 PM »

I'm not following. How do you hold stock in the chuck if the rem is only the width of saw blade? When we used to turn these parts on turret lathes here - way back in the day, we had rem chunks everywhere from having to have 2-3" left in the 4 jaw chuck to turn it. What machine would you recommend?

Passenger · « **Reply #92 on:** January 19, 2012, 06:24:57 PM »

Quote from: mandrel-bends on January 19, 2012, 04:16:49 PM

I'm not following. How do you hold stock in the chuck if the rem is only the width of saw blade? When we used to turn these parts on turret lathes here - way back in the day, we had rem chunks everywhere from having to have 2-3" left in the 4 jaw chuck to turn it. What machine would you recommend?

Adam don't take it personally, but I deleted my posts because I setup a customer doing the same thing we are discussing here, and it took a while to come up with the best setup for lights out machining of pipe flanges.
I will say you can absolutely chuck these parts and have zero rem, but you'd probably have to pay me to find out how

I want to help, but I am kind of biting the hand that feeds.

mandrel-bends · « **Reply #93 on:** January 20, 2012, 01:32:09 AM »

Thats ok. The current setup being run on the big puma 700 w/ bar feed has little to no rem, just a nub at the end of the bar. I may just end up duplicating the setup I know the parts are successfully produced on but I may scale it down to just a Puma 400 stay below 200k.

mandrel-bends · « **Reply #94 on:** February 07, 2012, 12:09:47 AM »

Little update:

We've been running baby waterjet 16 hours a day. We were rebuilding the pump about every 600 hours but we had a catastrophic failure last week when we trashed the crank assembly. It really wasn't designed for this level of abuse. So while we wait on an new crank case setup, we picked up a new pump, Omax 2010 P4055V. 40HP - 55K PSI.

Bought it with 460 hours on the meter since new. Demo unit. Totally stoked. This bastard pumps 55K @ 1.5 gallons per minute means I can run dual 12/30 nozzle setups or one huge 15/50 setup.

ratcityrex · « **Reply #95 on:** February 07, 2012, 10:35:20 AM »

Fuckin a dude! Good score! 460hrs really ain't shit!

mandrel-bends · « **Reply #96 on:** February 16, 2012, 07:31:29 PM »

Lots of 1/2" aluminum drops this week if anybody needs some cheap aluminum parts.

Adam

PhilStubbs · « **Reply #97 on:** February 16, 2012, 08:06:13 PM »

i could really use a steel or stainless flange to fit a 4bbl carb manifold. 1/4" thick or so. im not picky as long as it wont warp when i bolt it down. ill make it myself if you can just send some material at a reasonable cost. no good metal shops within an hour drive for me.

mandrel-bends · « **Reply #98 on:** February 16, 2012, 10:16:55 PM »

I got some 1/4" running tomorrow. Got a drawing or specs?

PhilStubbs · « **Reply #99 on:** February 16, 2012, 10:32:04 PM »

no, i dont. i was planning to just use a gasket to trace onto the steel and cut it with my plasma cutter.

this is basically what i need. i have searched all over the internet and cant find a file to cut with or any sort of measurements. i can take a pic with a ruler or take measurements and sketch it all out or whatever works for you.

mandrel-bends · « **Reply #100 on:** February 17, 2012, 12:52:28 AM »

1/4" cuts fast, wont cost much. Just get some measurements over to me and we can get it cut right 4 u.

DSMR · « **Reply #101 on:** February 17, 2012, 03:50:56 AM »

mandrel-bends · « **Reply #102 on:** February 17, 2012, 02:03:55 PM »

It looks like it's missing a couple critical bolt center to centers that are just below the piston housing assy drawing. Does anyone have those #s?

DSMR · « **Reply #103 on:** February 17, 2012, 02:35:40 PM »

Quote from: mandrel-bends on February 17, 2012, 02:03:55 PM

It looks like it's missing a couple critical bolt center to centers that are just below the piston housing assy drawing. Does anyone have those #s?

That is all I can divulge. Save that picture because I am going to take it down soon for obvious reasons.

PhilStubbs · « **Reply #104 on:** February 17, 2012, 03:54:33 PM »

I will get measurements when I get home tonight. I'm in florida so I'm a couple hours ahead of you. Hopefully I can get it to you early enough. I'm not in a major hurry and can wait till the next cut if this doesn't work.

mandrel-bends · « **Reply #105 on:** February 17, 2012, 04:13:59 PM »

I'll be running 1/4" plate today, monday and wednesday so no hurry. Customer bumped their quantities by 100. Maybe I'm quoting too cheap or something?

PhilStubbs · « **Reply #106 on:** February 17, 2012, 05:31:14 PM »

Wait to raise your prices till after I pay for this flange. Ha ha

PhilStubbs · « **Reply #107 on:** February 17, 2012, 06:34:31 PM »

ok, not real sure what you need since i have never cut a flange with water or a computer before. here is what i have

it can be made with the narrower opening the whole way. i dont need that extra bulge. its a 300hp crate motor

bolt centers are 5 6/16"

these are 4 1/4"

this way is 7"

92CXyD · « **Reply #108 on:** February 20, 2012, 02:34:02 PM »

Quote from: mandrel-bends on February 17, 2012, 04:13:59 PM

I'll be running 1/4" plate today, monday and wednesday so no hurry. Customer bumped their quantities by 100. Maybe I'm quoting too cheap or something?

Curious how much for Clutch Master Cylinder spacers using the 1/4" or 1/2"?

mandrel-bends · « **Reply #109 on:** February 20, 2012, 06:46:24 PM »

I can do those in 1/4" at $6 each. 1/2" would $12.

That carb spacer would only be $15 bucks or so in 1/4". I'm concerned that the measurements wont be 100% perfect though so I'm trying to locate a gasket locally. I doubt you are the only one who will need that.

PhilStubbs · « **Reply #110 on:** February 20, 2012, 07:57:00 PM »

Awesome. I'm sure you could sell a good bit in aluminum. I doubt steel will sell very well. I just can't weld aluminum so I'm making what I need in steel. Considering a lot of old v8 stuff came stock with steel manifolds I'm sure it will be fine.

mandrel-bends · « **Reply #111 on:** May 07, 2012, 04:45:19 PM »

So we finally got our vacuum lifter. I found one that could lift the big plate but with a small enough foot print to load the little waterjet. This one was $10k new, we bought for $4k. It's a new old stock that was sitting in a waterjet shop that closed. I still feel slightly bent over, but I guess it wasnt too bad.

ratcityrex · « **Reply #112 on:** May 07, 2012, 06:38:59 PM »

Nice. How many sq ft is your guys shop?

mandrel-bends · « **Reply #113 on:** May 07, 2012, 08:33:15 PM »

We own 3000 sq feet of mfg space in downtown st helens and about half the block that warehouse is on. We also have two more warehouses about 4 mile away that give us another 11,000 sq feet of warehouse space that we finished building in 2010. Then we have a satelite office about 3 miles away for accounting and another one in washougal for phone answering. Pretty spread out and the mfg space is tiny.

The big building is coming though. We have a construction project going on we just completed phase 1 (purchased the land and cashed it out) that is a 200x250 steel building (50,000 sq foot) that is scheduled for completion in 2014 with Heavy Industrial zoning. We will be able to bring everbody under one roof and move employment from 17 people to as many as 100 if needed. Right now we can only run 6 of our 14 benders and 2 of our 3 waterjet systems in the current building. (I just picked up a Flow IFB 60120)

mandrel-bends · « **Reply #114 on:** May 07, 2012, 08:41:53 PM »

For our business, the raw materials are the majority of our cost. So by dramatically increasing our ability to warehouse I can circumvent the middle man warehouses like marmon and tube service and buy the materials directly from the manufacturers by the truck load. For a business that buys as much as $800,000 in raw materials a year, we could conceivably be getting a 50% savings on the material. We've done a few pilots this year for some of the higher volume sizes and instead of getting 4000ft for $28k, we spent the same money on a complete truck load and got 8500ft. It was great until we figured out how much tube that really was and didn't have a place to store it.

ratcityrex · « **Reply #115 on:** May 07, 2012, 08:47:20 PM »

Wow, Biz sounds like its good. Good for you man.

mandrel-bends · « **Reply #116 on:** October 03, 2012, 08:14:53 PM »

We finally got the Jet Edge Waterjet fully functional and running. Yanked the old Allen Bradley 9 control off it. Had a company fly up from california that specializes in waterjet retrofits, and they put a brand new Centroid M400 control on it. Which btw - they advertise the controls at about $14k + install. But by the time you add all the features and options, it's more like $18k + install.

Anyway, we have both the 55k intensifier (waterjet pump) going and the Hypertherm HPR130 HyDef cutter going on it. I think we are going to buy a spanner bar so we can mount two waterjet heads plus the plasma all the same bar with adjustable center-center distances. Outside of that, just waiting for sigmanest to build me a new post so I can control all the machine functionality from our nesting software.

Also decided about two months ago that I should go back to school and get my master in business administration and masters in engineering. So that has been not all that fun going back to school after being out of it for 10 years. I'm still trying to decide if I really need these classes or not. It's almost like I get one good idea per 4 hours of sitting there wanting to kill myself from shear boredom. I guess we will see.

92CXyD · « **Reply #117 on:** October 03, 2012, 08:50:12 PM »

That is awesome, never too late to go back to school.

PhilStubbs · « **Reply #118 on:** October 04, 2012, 03:06:01 PM »

Since you have used both, if a small shop was trying to decide between cnc plasma or water jet, what would you recommend? Shooting for making 4-5 truck bumpers a week. I'm leaning towards cnc plasma due to upfront cost. Plus it would take up less space.

mandrel-bends · « **Reply #119 on:** October 06, 2012, 04:17:35 PM »

My preference is 1. waterjet 2. hydefinition plasma.

Cost wise: Waterjet's are very steep - 130k (used) to 300k (used) or around 220-600k for new. Oxygen plasma cnc system - 20-30k. Hydefinition plasma cnc system 60-250k.

Waterjet cost the most to operate. It cuts 10x slower then plasma. Parts are ready to ship right off the table. I regularly cut parts that hold +/- .001 tolerance. I can cut any material I put down on the table. I regularly stack sheets, so for instance copper gaskets, I cut 5 sheets stacked at a time. The resultant speed is faster then plasma or laser when you factor in you are cutting 5 parts at once. Waterjet's come with a significant cost of operation and maintenance, and it's not uncommon to have one go down for a week or more if you have trouble determining the issue which happens. We were down once for a month and a half. This year alone I've spent $30k on waterjet maintenance & consumables. However, we also run them 12 hours a day.

Hydefinition plasma cut looks very similiar to laser. It has a wider kerf then waterjet (0.080-.120 versus 0.030), has more spatter, but it has minimal taper compared to the oxygen plasma and it's very fast. With a good xyz system you can hold .005"-.010" pretty commonly with good consumables. The cut quality and accuracy are all related to the condition of the consumable, and where oxygen plasma just uses compressed air, hydef's use as many as 5 gases to get a good cut and maximize the consumable life. This doesn't come for free though, the consumables and high gas usage is a significant cost. You can retro a hydef power source to a standard xyz table pretty easily, but torch height control has to be addressed at the same time. It needs to be accurate to .01 V.

Oxygen plasma cnc systems are everywhere. Those are the torchmates, plasmacams, etc. They run hypertherm, thermal dynamics, etc oxygen power sources. They will give you an ok cut. If you are ok with spending a significant amount of time cleaning up parts, want to spend under $30k, and want to limit your spending to just torch consumables and not industrial gases - then it might be a good match. I haven't dealt with these much, but I have customers that send us plasma flanges for their assemblies, and they always look and weld like crap.

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