We're here in Madison, Wisconsin. Tormach is located just up the road and over the
years I was always fascinated by the idea of you know these low-cost highly
capable cnc machines
we're trying to incorporate more of the real world experience into our program
which a lot of our students wanted to do a project on cnc machine tending a lot of
companies still do a lot of machining and you know trying to automate and be more
efficient so part of that is trying to load parts automatically a nd unload
parts automatically and have a more complete process in place so that
brought us to Tomach to work with them since they had equipment available to
fit our scale that we can build interface with as well as our budget and
you know work with them on an idea to combine robotics and machine tending and
CNC programming we were fortunate with this particular project we have a
student who is also finishing up the machine tooling techniques program so he really
jumped in and took control of the CNC programming CAD/CAM side of things where
his partner focused more on the integration of the robot in the PLC programming so the
the concept of the project was to automate any type of machining operation
that might be found in manufacturing and Peter and your group was willing
to supply us with a small vertical machining center to to do this project
with so we're making a dice and I think the kind of behind that was is
just more simple
we're trying to show off more the process and not so much make a really
intricate part and everything
not to have a lot of machining time but to to show how much automation
is needed to to to produce the part and not so much of the machining part of it
yeah yeah we used with the fanuc robot we got there's a vision system built
into the controller for the robot so we use the vision system to actually pick
parts off of the conveyor like we use three pneumatic cylinders one that I'm
just controls clamping of the vice and actually as the vice jaws and everything
then we have another one that has a 90 degree rotational pneumatic cylinder
mounted on the end of it and that allows it to come into the vice and it has a
suction cup on the end actually grab the part so then I can come into the Vice
pull it back out and then it doesn't 90-degree turn when it so can load the
part back in a new position so it can work on the next face of the dice
between having the we're using a PLC to control the vice and then it also
controls the takes communications from the robot so we know what cycle the
robots in and where it it said in the cycle and then also from the tormach to
know what the tormach's doing if it's running or not so that was a little bit
of a challenge to get all the communications setup between the three
between the PLC, the robot, and the Tormach you know our students get so much out of
interfacing with different piece of equipment so because industry they're
going to run to all kinds of machines and he was something that was new
yeah that never had a machine that had a USB interface. talk to a PLC so just
integrating that was a great experience
I didn't have any experience with CNC equipment before i came to MATC here but
i have taken of classes in the machine tool program so I have g- code experience
and and cam cam experience so it was helpful to have that background to to
generate the program
and understand have a more of a bit of a concept of what the equipment
was capable of doing
I found PathPilot very very simple to use and very straightforward i didn't
have my first experience with it and found it very easy to navigate and found
it very helpful in accomplishing what we were trying to do know i thought the the
system seems to be pretty robust for this first compact size it worked well
and didn't see any issues or problems or lose the accuracy and repeatability were
excellent ran really well for us if you look across the hall where we have the
production level cnc equipment
yeah those are humongous machines yeah the way are thousands of pounds that
cost hundreds of thousands of dollars and so a lot of students are intimidated
by that type of equipment so when they see the smaller equipment that doesn't
look quite a scary has a simple user interface on it
yeah we found that the students jump right on it and were like yeah I want to
try this
I want to learn this the 440s it's such a nice footprint it would love to have
one in my basement to tool around with it's really perfect size perfect capabilities
for our needs
yeah I look forward to utilizing more you know either on a manufacturing
level for our students to make parts on or to integrate again and even take it a
bit further and automate the machine tending machining process even
further or it suddenly ends up in your basement yup yeah you know but nobody's going to
miss it over the summer right after graduation I'm going full time at the
company that I worked at over the summer for an internship so I'm going to be
working for a system integrator doing kind of similar stuff to this probably
not so much the machine tending but i'll be building machines and doing a lot
with
fanuc robotics and in the future now I've been exposed to both the CNC
world and the automation world I think i'm gonna look for a some type of
position with a machine tool vendor maybe as a field service guy out doing
automation for different manufacturing companies we just want to thank
Tormach for their partnership and support you know we kind of approached them and then
four weeks we had one of the first production machines available for us to
work with and without their local support and dedication wouldn't have been
able to do this and showcase Tormach and our program to the local industry
and it's a great partnership we look forward to continuing that and as far as
our program now our students get so much out of interfacing with different pieces
of equipment so because in industry they're going to run to all kinds of machines
and he was something that was new
yeah that never had a machine that had USB interface talk to a PLC so just
integrating that was a great experience