I've enjoyed Wes's videos for years, but I think it was this hoist drum machining and the way it was calculated on a spread sheet that prompted me to subscribe. His recent video on repairing the CNC in his new shop brought back a lot of fond memories of his earlier content.
That was a good one Wes. I enjoyed watching the machining, but more importantly how you showed it up close afterwards and explained the process you have gone through. I found that very interesting. You're a clever young man and a credit to our trade. I wish your customer more success, so you can get more orders for those part$. Again, thanks for putting the effort into these videos for us.
@@WatchWesWork No Mirrors. ;-) That IS a really cool process (no pun intended). When you explained it, it became clear how the groove was being made, from one side of the groove to the other, one step at a time, while cutting the whole goove from edge to center, Right and Left mirrored. The program must be lengthy. Such a nice, clean, end result.
Excellent job. I’m a retired machinist. 45 years. You did the job exactly right. In the lathe using a narrower profile tool and stepping it over incrementally to avoid chatter. Taking the cut in a full profile will always lead you to chatter city. To do it in a 4th axis mill would have taken a notoriously long time. Side note; it would have bothered me not to take a skim cut on the major OD to true it up. Runout would make it appear as though the thread was starting or ending in a non synchronized fashion if you get what I mean.
Back in the day (long winded story alert!) us old time machinists double scored elevator drums on a 48" engine lathe. The pitch was always oddball so we had to gear for it and naturally the plunges had to sync in the middle and the pull outs had to line up with the anchors on the ends. Took time for the many cuts and lots of sweat timing the plunge and stopping at a drilled hole. The drums were made of some kind of wonderful machining cast steel so we did have that one bright spot. Sure could have used a whopper CNC turning center in the early '70's. Take a lot of the anxiety out of the job.. Kids nowadays. Spoiled, I tell ya.
Very cool. This caught my eye because I drive a crane with a drum just like this, only bigger. The diameter is 5 feet and the length is about 15 feet. It spools 1.5 inch cable for a 80 ton maximum lift. The crane is steam-powered as is the crane ship itself. The crane was built in 1928 by William Arrol of Glasgow. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sir_William_Arrol_%26_Co. A photo of the crane ship in the bottom right of the Wikipedia page.
Is this it? en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sir_William_Arrol_%26_Co.#/media/File:Hikitia_crane_ship.JPG That's amazing. They sure didn't have CNC when that ship was made.
Once again you astound me. What a fantastic way to produce a complex product. I love the way you make it in a way that the buyer said it couldn’t be done. Back in the 80s I worked on a 4”, 6 start left hand internal acme thread. It pushed the cnc lathe right to its limits. Shame it was part of a sewage mincer. :) Completely by chance, I saw it in the tv a few years later and a guy was cutting condoms off it with a machete. Makes your lift parts look very nice. Great work Wes
Man just discovered your channel a couple of weeks ago - I love the way you have these older machines still in good service - great work on the drum - young guys like you have an amazing fusion of mechanical and IT talents on these machines - very very impressive - hope you are also a fan of edge precision on u tube - you're inspiring me to get one of these and learn how to use it - at the risk of sounding too complementary - you have an incredible stack of mechanical and IT talents man. Thanks for your generosity in sharing.
Wish I had that programmable profiling capability back in the Stone Age when I was double scoring hoist drums to stop at drilled dead end holes on a VBM. We had to use goosseneck form tools designed to break away if we over-ran the hole. Wah! I was born 40 years too early
Like I said, I made one on the engine lathe with a couple dial indicators and a printed spreadsheet of coordinates. With the foot brake I could stop pretty reliably at the end of the groove.
Thanks for the great video. I recall machining 28" diameter cable drums (8 sets actually), one right and one left make a set for a 70 ton Dam gate in Colorado many years ago, the old fashioned way. You've done a great job figuring that method out. Just for the heck of it, try putting two magnetic indicator bases(stems removed) inside the tube on opposite sides, centered on each groove area..to change the harmonics of your operation. You may get better tool life and most likely, less chatter. Let me know how that works if you do, thanks, good job. By the way, we did do the ramp in and out manually, but it was on a 1902 lathe (old Belt drive to electric motor conversion) and the compound turned clockwise to come out!....yea...
That was super cool! Every time I see the amazing things you can do with cnc machines, I think to myself, I should learn this stuff. I would have tried to do that job on my horizontal mill with the universal head, universal divider geared to the table feed and a form cutter. I think I could do it, but the tooling costs and the setup time would be a lot longer. Chatter might rear it's ugly has too, but there are usually ways around that. Love your videos!
Wes enjoying your variety of videos. One request however could you do a video on setting up a CNC program and tooling. Iam 73 years old but really like to learn this before I get "the call". Thanks again.
I messaged you a while back about doing this on a larger scale. I got the program to work but the drum was just too long to cut without a steady rest. I had to end up cutting it on our manual machine. Our cnc will cut about 13' long but the steady will only open to 12" dia. This drum was larger than that. We quoted 4 drums that are 12" dia. x 39" long so if we get the job, we are going to try it. It has .688" wide grooves so it will take more passes than this one of yours. I am getting ready to cut one on our manual machine that is 25" diameter and 19' long. It will probably take the most part of a week. It has 15/16 wide grooves with a pitch of 1 1/16". I cut it with a high speed full radius tool but this is a large 50" x 20' lathe. We do these for a company that makes them up to 8' in diameter.
Know what might look cool as just 'Art?' Use your CNC machine to make a Ginormous looking Bolt & Nut. Make it hollow as to not tilt the axis of the earth and send you to the poor house...but I dunno, just a thought. Have it hang from your shop with the tiniest wire that will safely work. Maybe have a sign on it "yes, it's real steel."
I used to do drawworks spools on a mazak turnmill, but the grooves on those aren't perfectly helical, so it had to be done on a rotary axis with live tooling. It definitely took a lot longer than turning.
Let me know when you start 3D printing. I used to run old AC and once your setup was done you could run them for weeks on end with very little offsets on you tool. Great video as always👍🏻🍻
We make cable hoist drums like this on a much larger scale. Sometimes up to 12' long. We always do them on a manual machine but we recently purchased a large cnc lathe. Would you be interested in sharing your spread sheet or at least how it is set up.
to get the two thread ends to align at the middle, you need to offset the start position of one of the thread, i'm guessing if your tool insert is 4mm wide, then if you start at +10mm on the right hand thread, the lefthand thread should start at -10mm off the end of the part and some offset amount. I've done similar jobs and end up having to adjust some offset :)
Folks like Wes need to be kept locked up somewhere so the rest of us don't feel so...dumb! I was duly impressed by the work and the video. Great stuff!
Here in Canada we have to go to the manufacturer of the hoist/winch to get a new drum as they have to be engineered. I worked in the overhead crane industry for 9 years and all refits and mods need to be engineered with all drawings stamped with the engineers seal. All because of "Liability". You seem to be a Jack Of All Trades and a Master Of None which is being a Millwright/Industrial Mechanic. Keep up the good work.
@@WatchWesWork As I mentioned that we have to get our parts from the manufacturer. Our Government Workplace Health and Safety don't allow us to get parts for the hoist/winch engineered by an outside firm. They want parts made by the manufacturer again because of the "Liability" issue. Anything relating to the hook block such as the wire rope sheaves/pulleys can be made elsewhere as long as the parts are machined to same specifications and materials. The hook itself has to be from the manufacturer and anything below the hook can be made elsewhere as long as the engineers drawings along with his/hers seal is on the drawings. I am sure your OSHA must be the same or as long as the parts are engineered they are "comfortable" with that. Again your a man of many talents and keep the vids coming as you educate and entertain.
@@WatchWesWork Wow that is a feather in your cap if the manufacturers are sending work your way. Must be proud to have that kind of respect for your labours (Canadian way).
So Wes is that machine dedicated to manufacture those cable drums? Can you use it to make anything else? My OCD is screaming seeing the start and end of the groove cuts, but you did say that it does not affect the function of threading the cables so I'll just have to put my OCD back in its box. Great video, thumbs up.
Reminds me of the drum on my bridge crane. I use the Kennametal groove and turn inserts a lot. You might want to try to see if you can find a 7 something numbered grade of that insert to try to see if it improves the life.
Do you know a specific grade? This is a KC5010 grade. They are AlTiN coated. The actual cutting edge holds up pretty well, but the chip breaker does not last more than 6 or so parts. After 3 parts it's already breaking down.
They are constantly changing grade numbers and many grades are not available for certain cutters. Looking at the current turning chart I would tray a KCP10 if you can get that insert in that grade.
Hi, Have you tried putting a draft excluder snake or large hose pipe in the end of your steel pipe to deaden the singing, chatter? Something we learnt that suprisingly works. 👍👍
Aweomse that you turn all that material off with the small tool, small tool, low tool pressure = no chatter, makes good sense to me. but where is the machining footage?!? lol
What if you made a couple o-ringed dams and filled it with coolant before machining the 30" unit? The coolant would dampen the vibrations and you would just pop a plug out at the end to let the coolant drain, then pop the dams out.
I've heard of guys filling parts with wet rags or lengths of rubber hose. I think that would help some. A better fitting plug for the tailstock end would probably be the best solution. But, I've only run 12 of the 30" parts ever, so I can live with a little chatter.
Very cool. I'd love to see the program and sub program. Did you use any programming software or did you write it all by hand? And how did you ensure the timing was there for both sides?
very interesting work, could you give an example of a program for such processing? I work on a similar machine Mori Seiki SL 25 with the Yasnac LX 3 CNC system and I would like to know more precisely how to program a similar thread profile with a radius insert...
Buenos días, Me ha gustado mucho el video. Me dedico a programar roscas especiales en paramédicas y me gustaría contactar con usted. He programado todo tipo de roscas, destacando la rosca Lebus, ejecutado en un torno CNC sin eje C. Un saludo.
Hi Wes I’m looking to do similar only the groove is straight for 125 degrees and then kicked half the diameter of the wire over 55degrees then straight for 125 again and so on. What o was thinking is to use c axis and grooving tool. Any suggestions?? For 20mm groove using 6mm grooving tool!!
Hi Wes I’ve been trying it using a button tool and it seems to work pretty well I run the c axis at 20000m/min but I need to work out the start points do you have excel sheet for your groove??
Thanks. I'm proud of this job. It's really nice when you put a lot of work into writing a program and it actually work the way you wanted. Too often in machining things just don't work, and it's frustrating.
Wes Johnson I'm still trying to guess what would make the ends of the grooves land differently. Not important, but curious if you figured out what the issue was. Nice work - I'm jealous of your skills!
It's not hard to write the program. Just lay out the groove and the insert in a CAD software and measure all of the X and Z points needed. Use those points in G32 lines. I had a spreadsheet, but I lost it in a computer crash. If I had it I would share it.
i wonder but you make so few so far is you could make an expanding insert to fit inside the DOM tubing but does not interfere with the chuck jaws or the centering plate to add rigidity to reduce the chatter on the longer parts. think of something like a tail pipe tube expander.. just something to slide in and support the ID and dampen any harmonics. www.harborfreight.com/Large-Tail-Pipe-Expander-69549.html heck.. you might be able to use a piece of 7" OD DOM turned down just slightly and slit. with a pair of expanders bolted to either side of the slit.. one with a long hex so you don't have to reach inside to cause it to expand.. both expanding nuts would be at one end. the expanders would need to be 15 or 20% or so in from each end.. perhaps with some Orings on it also. its just a thought.. as for the lead out being offset.. slack in something that changes left and right tool movement. nice parts finish ..
Of course, if your machine is big enough... (looks like a carbide insert form tool...) ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-6zRd5LbeACI.html
