Reduce Cycle Time with a Multi-Part Fixture on the Haas UMC-750P - Long Version

If you have a high production job making hundreds or even thousands of parts, having a dedicated fixture for the job may make sense. This video will show you some tips and techniques to help you with that process. Today we're going to look at the UNC750P. Now the P in the name stands for porting, as in porting cylinder heads, but that's just one of many possible applications for this unique machine. Having this rotary on the machine table allows for the use of a wide variety of work holding, which means you can customize the machine to your application. You can always build your own fixture or you can make use of one of the Haas rotary products like the tooling block, tooling plate, or cube, and even the quick change system. Whichever one you choose, you'll be on your way to cranking out a bunch of parts and saving yourself some serious cycle time. By the way, a number of topics we'll discuss in this video are covered in detail in another Haas video. You'll want to watch Mark Terryberry's tip of the day video titled Run More Than One Part at a Time, How Production Shops Use M97. Okay, so here's the part I need to make and with the quantities I'm dealing with, I sure don't want to be moving this from vice to vice. I'll show you how to make a fixture that will allow me to machine the top and two sides in a single operation. Because the UMC750P has 30 inches of x-axis travel, I'm going to use all of that travel by using the Haas 20 inch tooling block and attaching it to my HRT210 rotary table. The tooling block is four and a half inches or 114 millimeters square and has precision bosses on each end. One end mates it with the adapter plate and the other is a slip fit for the A-frame support. Not having to machine these features saves me a ton of time. By the way, one of the great things about this entire setup is that I can pull all this stuff off my UMC if necessary and move it over to my VF2 or my VF3 and run the exact same program. Now because of the height of my part, I'm going to need something low profile to hold my parts. I've chosen the Mighty Bike Talon Grip for my stop and Pitbull Clamp for clamping. I love this system because one turn of the cap screw tightens or loosens the clamp. Programming for my fixture was very simple. Both the grip and the clamp use the same size pocket, the only difference being their depth and the size of the tapped hole. You can see here I've added a reamed hole for a dowel pin so that I can precisely locate each part in the x-axis direction. Part spacing allows me to have seven parts on each side. This gives me 28 parts total. Since my x-axis spacing is exactly two and a half inches, I just programmed one and then repeated it six times changing my x-axis work offset by two and a half inches each time. Now for the part itself I programmed one part in my cam system calling the top center of the part x y and z zero. I'm using my generic Haas 4-axis post processor and then made three simple edits for dynamic work offsets to work. The three edits are at the beginning of each tool operation that cuts when the fixture is rotated away from zero. Just add G254 after the work offset is called and after the rotary move. Make sure you call x and y coordinate positions after your G254 and before your tool approaches the workpiece in the z-axis. Cancel G254 with a G255 after each operation. I loaded a single part and proofed out my program. I optimized my code to remove any unnecessary motion and codes that increased my cycle time. Now that I've optimized my cycle time for one part is 4 minutes 24 seconds or 264 seconds. Now I manually change each tool operation into a separate subroutine by simply adding a unique end number at the start of each tool and an M99 at the end of each tool. I'll use an N10 for the first tool N20 for the second tool and so on. The plan is to use a different work offset for each part and then use an M97 local sub program call to repeat the subroutines. Here's how I do it. Call the first work offset and then call the first tool subroutine then call the second work offset and again call the first tool subroutine. Work offsets for the first seven parts are at rotary position A0. The next seven are at A-90 then A-180 and finally A-270 degrees. So I'll run the first tool subroutine a total of 28 times once at each work offset and then recall my first work offset and call the subroutine for the second tool. I'll repeat this for as many tools as I have in my program. Now if you're thinking that programming all of these work offsets and subroutine calls is going to be very time consuming you're right but I have a great tip for you that'll save you a lot of time. I use an excel spreadsheet and cut copy and paste to greatly reduce the amount of typing I have to do. So I open a spreadsheet and type G154 space P01 in cell A1 and then G154 space P02 in cell A2. Now I highlight both cells and drag it down to cell A28 and then copy and paste that in my program right before the tool subroutines. I now have a clean column of 28 different work offsets. All I need to do is insert the subroutine call to the first tool operation between each work offset. I open a blank line after each work offset and paste M97 P10 after each one. Every time the program sees this it will jump to line number N10 and run that subroutine first. Since each subroutine has an M99 at the end it returns to the next line which changes the work offset and calls that subroutine again. My fixture has seven work pieces on each face so I'm going to add a Z axis retract move after the 7th, 14th and 21st subroutine calls. This will ensure that I don't have any interference when the A axis rotates to other faces of the fixture. This is going to run the first tool operation in 28 different locations. Copy this entire chunk of Now using the find and replace function find M97 space P10 and replace it with M97 space P20 in the new code you just pasted. You will repeat this process for each tool operation subroutine in your program. Last but not least add a position you want the machine to move to so that unloading and reloading your fixture is as convenient as possible. Then finish your program with an M30 just underneath your M30 should be all of your tool operation subroutines. Now that my program is complete it's time to load my 28 pieces of raw material. Then using the probe we'll set work offsets for each of the 28 locations. Using two different VPS templates I can create a simple program to probe all the parts on one side of my tooling block. Let me show you how I did it. First open the single surface template and set it up to probe the Z axis for the first work offset G154 P01. Now I press F4 and the number 3 to create new program. Follow the on-screen directions to create a program number and file name for your new probe program. Now I open the rectangle block template and set it up to probe the first work offset. This time when I press F4 I select number 1 to insert to clipboard. Once it's on the clipboard I open the newly created program and edit mode and press F1 and then choose paste from clipboard. I'll be copying and pasting this six more times so I want to remove the comments that I don't need. Now my two probing routines are next to each other in the program. After both probe cycles run on the first part I want to move to the next part and run the cycles again. I know my parts are two and a half inches apart so I add G91, X-2.5 and a G90. Now highlight the first probing cycle, press F2, scroll down to the G90 and press F2 again to complete the selection. Now I press enter six times to copy my selection six times. Then I add an M30 to the end after all the parts on this side of the tooling block have been probed. Now this part can be a bit tedious but there's no way around it. You'll need to edit the repeated W154.01 to W154.02, W154.03 and so on up to W154.07. Now jog the spindle over the center of the first part and run the program. This will probe to set the X, Y and Z axis work offsets for the seven parts on this side of the block. Keep an eye on the work offset page to verify that the probe cycles update G154 P1 through G154 P7 work offsets. Once that's finished I just rotate the A-axis 90 degrees and edit the program to use W154.08, W154.09 etc. I repeat the process until I've probed all the work offset positions. When all my work offsets are set I can run my part program. It took some time to make my fixture and create my program but here's the payoff. Remember my original cycle time for one part was four minutes 24 seconds? Now each part takes three minutes 22 seconds. That's a 23.5 percent reduction in cycle time or to think of it another way that means I save one minute per part which if I had to make 1,000 parts means I save 16 hours and 40 minutes. Multiply that by your shop rate and you'll see that's real money. Now obviously there is time spent programming parts and machining the fixture so you'll need to analyze your own situation and see if this makes sense for you but as you can see using M97 subprograms and having a multi-part fixture can save you time and money. Well thanks for watching.