I just made a program that has 43 minutes run time. That's the longest I have ever done for a single part. I did a Zeiss program that was 9 hours but it was for 20 parts at the same time. What is some of your run times?
I used to program pretty large bulkheads. My longest program ever was a full FAI on a bulkhead that ran for ~11 hours each side. So ~22 - 23 hours total. Plus set up.
Disclaimer. It wasnt the fastest machine so that probably added a lot of time. but regardless it was thousands and thousands of points.
If I was allowed 2-3 weeks to write a program that would be amazing. Most of the time I am lucky to get 3 hours. CMM use here is a brand new thing and upper man just does not see the value in it yet.
At my current job my longest program is probably about an hour. But we are slowly moving to larger parts so that number will probably go up in the next year
About 2 years ago I had a big prototype aircraft part that was technically too wide for the machine. The shop machined big 45° triangles so we could fit it on the machine. Each side side was 14 hours run time. Almost 40,000 points and 1200 circles (6 hits each circle). I spent 3-4 weeks programming it.
Boss an owner came to me a few weeks ago and brought a print for a part they are quoting asking if I can inspect it. It's the same size as the aforementioned part but 5" thicker. Yeah... I can do it.
Main Gearbox Housing for aircraft engine. Customer needed a full first article inspection.
Took 4 solid weeks to program, 6hr CMM cycle time, 58page CMM report.
This job literally had hundreds of true positions and many of the checks were redundant. If I had to guess, someone fresh out of engineering school sat at their desk and pushed the GD&T buttons as many times as they could before releasing these prints to us lol
I suppose you all spend lots of time planning and review the probe path and such. but we are not perfect. How do you all handle unexpected probe hits and things of that nature. Or a scenario where your measurements are so far off you decide to re calibrate your probes. Do you just have to start over? Print the report in sections
Biggest machine I have is a 7107 and the longest run time was probably about 30 mins.
I suppose you all spend lots of time planning and review the probe path and such. but we are not perfect. How do you all handle unexpected probe hits and things of that nature. Or a scenario where your measurements are so far off you decide to re calibrate your probes. Do you just have to start over? Print the report in sections
Biggest machine I have is a 7107 and the longest run time was probably about 30 mins.
I don't spend lots of time planning to be honest. All of my programs follow the same flow when it comes to "finding the part" and setting up base alignments.
When it comes to actually driving around the part...I write a section of code and don't move on until I am entirely confident that it won't crash. Do that from start to finish, you're good!
I am a big fan of using clearance planes that are tied to a feature (is nice if you're changing your alignments a lot)
