ProMfg book - opinions?

[marker4x4]

I've noticed the "A Pro/MANUFACTURING Tutorial" book advertising on this

site (I paid attention to popups for once

) and I'm wondering if anyone has read it.



I think I'm past the beginner stage, but again, as we all know ProE can
be used on 1001 ways and I'm sure I don't know many of the tricks yet.

Anyway, before I fork out 35 bucks, I rather ask.



Thanks

 

[peterbrown77]

I bought it and returned it for a refund. Not that there was anything incorrect about it, I just found it to be far too basic to be of much use.





Regards

 

[marker4x4]

<>I bought it and returned it for a refund. Not that there was
anything incorrect about it, I just found it to be far too basic to be
of much use.

</>Regards

Yeah, that's what I thought, mose of those books are for students and such.



How long have you been using ProMFG? Just curious, I've been on it for
about two+ years now, several years prior to that just designing s**t.



CATIA before that... I still miss it

 

[peterbrown77]

I've been using Pro/NC for almost 3 years. We really have it leveraged with Vericut Machine Simulation and a complete library of solid tool assemblies, etc. Each program goes through a complete simulation on the target machine before we release it; haven't broken a tool in a year. It took a lot effort to set it up, but once that's done things work pretty seamlessly.
Edited by: peterbrown77

 

[marker4x4]

I've been using Pro/NC for almost 3 years. We
really have it leveraged with Vericut Machine Simulation and a complete
library of solid tool assemblies, etc. Each program goes through
a complete simulation on the target machine before we release it;
haven't broken a tool in a year. It took a lot effort to set it
up, but once that's done things work pretty seamlessly.

Nice.

That's exactly my problem in here - environment setup.

Things are being programmed quite randomly, there's not much of
pre-sets except of ProMfg "seed" models with tools defined for each of
our NC Mills. There's few most common parameter files (*.mil) saved in
the common directory and that's about it.



I know, we don't utilize the ProMfg nowhere near its real power, but
unlike designers, we (NC pple) don't have any training available in our
area. Buuhuu.



I wonder if I could get some pointers for the good setup - what needs to be done in order to make our life a bit easier

. In return I'd be more than happy to share my experience.



Thaks

-mark

 

[peterbrown77]

I would have to say that the most important aspect is standardization. You have to have everyone working from the same playbook. For a start, you need to come to agreement with the shop on tools. Calling for a .750 endmill is just not enough; you leave too much to operator initiative. He could pick a long one, or a stubby one, or a two flute or a three flute, HSS or carbide - you get the idea. I established a part numbering system for tool assemblies and sub-components, and created the entire assembly - holder, tool, retention knob, collets, nuts, extensions, etc, along with an assembly drawing containing a repeat region showing all these items. The gage length is also shown. We publish all these drawings to PDF and they are available to the programmer as well as the tool crib.


As an example, we have approximately 300 CAT40 tool assemblies. This isn't really that much when you consider that taps, drills, and reamers are probably 150 of them. This gives an NC programmer a fairly wide selection from which to choose, while at the same time discouraging the use of one-off tools (do you really need a 1.125 end mill?). Programmers and operators can learn more about a specific tool's performance - feed/speed/tool life. There are also cost benefits related to increased order quantities of fewer tools, and not having to inventory so MANY tools. Same tools may be exactly the same, but one is used for finishing and one for roughing, and when the finishing one gets worn, it becomes a rougher.Tthe most important benefit is confidence in programming. The programmer knows that what he sees on the screen (holder clearance, cut length) is what the operator is going to see on the floor. In my experience, this is very liberating because, after you have learned to trust it, you can drive the machine into places you would never have had the nerve to before.


After tooling - or really part and parcel of it - is accurate fixture modeling. This can be the most difficult conceptually, because (to be frank) NC programmers may not be the best ProE drivers or make the most robust designs. For this reason, we have designers whose job it is to just design fixtures, and they pass these off to the programmers when they're done (of course they collaborate on the fixture concept). Again, the benefit is accuracy and confidence.





Regards


Peter Brown
Edited by: peterbrown77

 

[marker4x4]

Peter,



thanks for the response. That's EXACTLY what I'm trying to do in here -
even though we're only a small place to boot, but still the variety of
jobs kind of forces standarisation.



But what haunts me the most is how to properly set up the ProE
structure to make the full use of it. Libraries of materials, cutting
parameters associated with it and all that, so when you pick up say,
1.000" HSS Endmill from your list of tools, and your part is 6061 Alu.,
ProE would fill the speeds and feeds automatically acording to the
pre-set values. Drilling is another nightmare... the Auto-drill
routine? I wish I knew how to use it. The list goes on and on, not to
mention the setup sheet (PLEASE, tell me how the hell do you do that in
ProE??)....

Again, any ideas will be much appreciated.



Thanks, -mark

 

[jonsey_bj]

I also bought the book and found it to be too basic. I was very new to ProMan so i went thru it but its only 50 to 75 pages. That alone should tell you how basic it is. the only place i've seen anything is the PTC collaboration site. Francois Lamy has put many training files and examples there and if your company is paying maintaince he'll get you on the site easily. Other then that i've found nothing.

 

[peterbrown77]

I did attempt to set up the feeds/speeds/material data, but gave up. The first problem was that it didn't work with solid tools - or at least solid tools and Pro/INTRALINK. Every time I re-opened the file, the Tool Manager 'forgot' the settings. I think it does work with parameter-based tools, but that doesn't help me because I don't use them. I did get a few SPRs generated for those problems, though I don't think they've yet been addressed. Additionally, the deeper I got into it the more it became apparent that there is no 'one-size-fits-all' speed/feed setting, even for a particular tool and material. Depth of cut, width of cut, fixture rigidity, type of cut (pre-finishing, finishing)-all things for which ProE cannot account- have a huge bearing on feeds. This I think is where a 'good' NC programmer earns his keep. He should know through experience what is best, at least until the machine operator runs the job for the first time and then corrects the numbers. It is this constant flow of information between the fixture designer/nc programmer/machinist that is critical to successfully generating good parts quickly and consistently.


For the same reason (solid tools and Intralink) I have not attempted to Auto-Drill anything. Plus, drilling is so easy that I don't know what real benefit I would achieve from the effort. Far more cumbersome are inserting tool variables and trajectory sequences. Holemaking is like falling off a log.


I have a setup sheet I use with repeat regions that shows tool id, comments, coolant setting, etc that I can email to you - if i had an address.


Regards


ps. Getting back to the original post topic, version 2001 had the Collection of Help Topics CDROM. There is a 350 page PDFmanual for NC on it. Some things have changed in WF 1 and WF 2.0, but it is still generally valid.

 

[marker4x4]

.... drilling is so easy that I don't know what
real benefit I would achieve from the effort. Far more cumbersome
are inserting tool variables and trajectory sequences.

Agree, but suppose you have a part with zillion different holes that
need to be spoted to certain depth (to get the chamfer), drilled,
tapped/reamed/c-bored and hell knows what else.... It'd be kinda nice
to heve it all automatic. I know that creating drilling sequences is
no-brainer, but it just takes time that rather should be used for more
"fancy" stuff. I'm planning to explore this option anyway (along with
about thousand others

) and see what happens.



Cheers

-mark

 

[cncwhiz]

Marker4x4,


If you have a zillion holes like that the I would use hole set option as well. Peter is correct if you don't have what you are discribing you need to do. I do hydraulic valves and there is holes everywhere but if they are not all the same config like if you need to port or thread mill etc the hole sets are redundant work. If you are using wildfire then you can config the process manager to output almost anything you want to output from proman. I use this for setup sheets and tool lists and it is a very handy tool.

 

[marker4x4]

Marker4x4,


If you have a zillion holes like that the I would use hole set
option as well. Peter is correct if you don't have what you are
discribing you need to do. I do hydraulic valves and there is holes
everywhere but if they are not all the same config like if you need to
port or thread mill etc the hole sets are redundant work.
If you are using wildfire then you can config the process manager to
output almost anything you want to output from proman. I use this for
setup sheets and tool lists and it is a very handy tool.

I hear ya. I'm always a bit vary too when it comes to "automatic"
routines but hey, you ask - you learn. I'm on 2001, it sounds like
you're happy with WF? I haven't seen yet it to be honest, pple have
different opinions on it - is it like Expert Machinist in 2001 or???

 

[cncwhiz]

marker 4x4,


Not much changed for pro manufacturing in wildfire except a few things. The "GUI" is even pretty much the same. I don't use expert machinist so I can't tell you about that. Just a word of warning to all if you do thread milling in pro then you need to run the newest version of wildfire as that it had a bugI turned in and they fixed it it the new version.