TubeBender
Industrial
We are a small tube shop and we are looking at purchasing a Mazak SG-U44 to do all of our punching, notching, and what not in tubes.
We watched all the videos and were quite impressed with what the machine could do. We finally made it down to Chicago for a demo at Mazak where they were going to run some parts for us. They wanted our prints and parts ahead of time so they could be prepared. This seemed odd for something that should be so easy to set up, so we declined their request.
We showed up with with a print for a piece of 1.25"x1.25"x.083 CR square tube. The tube was 30" long. It had 2 holes on each of three faces, all holes within 8 inches or so of one end of the tube. Two of the holes were also supposed to have a small countersink. We also brought along 25 pieces of tubing.
They took our print and did the programming in a couple of minutes. No problems there, their software is quite nice.
Then they took us out to the machine and after 3 hours they had only managed to cut 10 parts, with no two parts being the same. He'd get a part close to right, then one hole would wander .030" or more off center, while other holes would remain centered.
It would cut the hole to be countersunk, then cut the countersink without moving the tube, and the countersink wasn't centered over the hole. We finally offered to let them skip the countersink and told them we'd do that mechanically. Even then, the holes seemed to wander all over the place with no rhyme or reason, even though the technician was trying extra hard to keep the material centered in the chuck.
After the 3 hours, they finally admitted defeat and told us there must be something wrong with their demo machine, as our part was about as simple as it gets.
Do any of you guys out there with Space Gears have this many problems setting up a job in the laser? Is it really not as simple as it would seem? Does the whole chuck thing even work like it should and do what they say it will? From what I saw, it seems like you could never set the thing up and have unskilled labor simply change parts like we were told.
It's a cool machine, but if it won't do a good job on tubing in a production setting, it's just not for us.
They are supposed to be getting this thing setup to do our simple part and we are going to go back during IMTS. I really do want to believe that the machine works. After all, our new machine is at IMTS
I dunno. Like I said, if anyone has any thoughts, I'd appreciate them.
Thanks.
We watched all the videos and were quite impressed with what the machine could do. We finally made it down to Chicago for a demo at Mazak where they were going to run some parts for us. They wanted our prints and parts ahead of time so they could be prepared. This seemed odd for something that should be so easy to set up, so we declined their request.
We showed up with with a print for a piece of 1.25"x1.25"x.083 CR square tube. The tube was 30" long. It had 2 holes on each of three faces, all holes within 8 inches or so of one end of the tube. Two of the holes were also supposed to have a small countersink. We also brought along 25 pieces of tubing.
They took our print and did the programming in a couple of minutes. No problems there, their software is quite nice.
Then they took us out to the machine and after 3 hours they had only managed to cut 10 parts, with no two parts being the same. He'd get a part close to right, then one hole would wander .030" or more off center, while other holes would remain centered.
It would cut the hole to be countersunk, then cut the countersink without moving the tube, and the countersink wasn't centered over the hole. We finally offered to let them skip the countersink and told them we'd do that mechanically. Even then, the holes seemed to wander all over the place with no rhyme or reason, even though the technician was trying extra hard to keep the material centered in the chuck.
After the 3 hours, they finally admitted defeat and told us there must be something wrong with their demo machine, as our part was about as simple as it gets.
Do any of you guys out there with Space Gears have this many problems setting up a job in the laser? Is it really not as simple as it would seem? Does the whole chuck thing even work like it should and do what they say it will? From what I saw, it seems like you could never set the thing up and have unskilled labor simply change parts like we were told.
It's a cool machine, but if it won't do a good job on tubing in a production setting, it's just not for us.
They are supposed to be getting this thing setup to do our simple part and we are going to go back during IMTS. I really do want to believe that the machine works. After all, our new machine is at IMTS
I dunno. Like I said, if anyone has any thoughts, I'd appreciate them.
Thanks.
