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Let Your Okuma Do That For You By Randy Jokerst, Hartwig Applications Manager Have you ever thought about how your Okuma can make you more money? I'm sure you have. Many of the common thoughts are: How can I make this part run faster? How can I cut my tooling or workholding costs? These are both good approaches, but I would like to share a few things you may not have considered. One of the easiest ways to have your Okuma save you money is to allow it to help the operator protect your investment. You can have the part program keep an eye on all the switches on the front panel. On a lathe, have you ever forgotten to turn on the "Auto Coolant" button? If so, you know that you spend more on insert drills and inserts. The program can prevent the machine from running if any of the buttons or switches are not in the correct position (including the feedrate override). This feature is on all Okuma machines with the OSP control made after 1984. What if your machine told you when it was time to change the inserts, and did not allow the machine to run until you changed them? This feature is called Tool Life Management. In the past, this was an option but is now standard on all Okumas with the OSP control. With the latest OSP P200 "THiNC" control, we ask you to THiNC about anything that your operator is doing that we can automate. When the operator is writing anything down, he is doing tasks that the machine could likely do for him. Is he measuring a size that needs to be documented on every part? Buy a cable for your caliper or micrometer that allows it to plug into the machine's USB port. As the operator measures the part, the data can go directly into the machine. From here, it can automatically be entered into Excel or taken further, and actually manage tool offsets for you to keep the process under control. How about having the operator use a bar code scanner to scan the job traveler? From here, the machine takes over. It can select the proper part program, change any tool offsets that need them, and even start a PowerPoint presentation to show the operator how to set up the machine for the job. One of the great things about the THiNC control is that it is truly an Open Architecture control. What does this mean to you? This means that you can write your own Windows XP applications, which run on the control, and freely communicate with the machine via the free APIs. All you need are a few Visual Basic programming skills. Those of you, like me, who are Visual Basic illiterate, have many companies competing with each other to help you out. In addition, there is a group of end users, distributor AEs, integrators, and Okuma engineers called the TDG (THiNC Developers Group). This group is not only developing some of these THiNC applications for the real world but is also assisting and giving guidance to end users and other developers. These are just a few of the things the Okuma is capable of. Let our Applications Engineers at Hartwig help you to make more money. For more information, please visit our website at www.hartwiginc.com or send an email to us.
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Announcing!! The worlds most popular CMM software is now available for most Zeiss CMM's
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