Programming system dedicated to citizen machine tools
Article Type: Aerospace world From: Aircraft Engineering and Aerospace Technology: An International Journal, Volume 80, Issue 6
For an investment of £500, the CMC Wizard is said to enable accurate programs to be produced very quickly off-line for Citizen CMC sliding head turn-mill centres, reportedly ensuring error-free optimised machine cycles that enable standard methods of production to be set and worked to.
Available from Citizen Machinery UK of Watford, the CMC Wizard is dedicated to Citizen machines and overcomes a problem faced by most users of CMC sliding head machines that do not have dedicated CNC programmers. In most companies the person responsible for machine setting will also prepare the program on the shopfloor surrounded by day-to-day distractions. Also, because most setters tend to cut and paste to edit programs of a previous job, there is little in the way of commonality or standardisation in the setup.
Proprietary CAM software rarely satisfies floor-to-floor time requirements where sliding head users are chasing fractions of a second on short cycles. It can become very complicated to optimise the simultaneous use of two, three or four different tools – a common influencing factor in the highly competitive productivity level that machines of this type achieve.
CMC Wizard is said to take about an hour to learn because it replicates the view and feel of the on-machine display. It will easily cater for the complete range of Citizen lathes including the multiple use of the 80 tools that can be carried on the top of the range Citizen M32. It will minimise the chance of error that could result in downtime or a collision and can also provide an ideal training aid for beginners, and staff improvement or be used to prepare quotations.
Incorporated in the package is a code library for different machining processes against reference material and diagrams that relate to the part being machined. Functions such as two-way program transfer, the all important storage for traceability and communications, are built in.
Depending on the Citizen machine being used, the program is divided into specific sections such as main and subspindle, turret or toolslides and the operation required is selected directly from a menu. Easy to understand templates are completed in response to a series of prompts. The program, with all the correct synchronisation commands is displayed while a code editor requests the insertion of relevant values. A single click then incorporates the code into the program.
Details available from: Citizen Machinery UK Limited. Tel: +44 (0) 1923 691500, Web site: www.citizenmachinery.co.uk
