It's been a couple of months since I last update. Well, I must say I have been busy AND lazy at the same. Truth to be told, I had been working in Continental Motors (formerly knowns as Teledyne Continental Motors) for last 3 months. Last week was my last week working there. I kind of miss the weather, and people down in Alabama.
Anyway let's cut the chase, I am now working in Sonora, California. The customer is called MMI. It is a small warehouse, and I will be installing FH450S with MAM-C Compact Matrix Magazine. Everything is pretty much installed except the MAM-C's laser needs to be calibrated, and the rest it's probably coolant debugging.
Hopefully, I won't be in Sonora, CA too long because this town is like in the countryside. My work phone has no data connection whatsoever.
Wednesday, February 1, 2012
Tuesday, November 8, 2011
Teledyne Day 7
Today my coworker and I worked on the stuff related to RGV (rail guided vehicle). Since the chiller, and the reservoir hadn't arrived yet.
First, we needed to install the cages on the buffer stations, then we had to install the cages outside the RGV. We had to mix and match different sizes of cages in order for them to fit in between the machines. Next, we set the anchors down for the buffer stations, and the only thing they needed was to have the maintenance guys to drill holes to secure them down.
Also, the machine was ready for air, but we wouldn't be able to use it until we got the chiller. It seems like the chiller was the bottleneck of our installation.
First, we needed to install the cages on the buffer stations, then we had to install the cages outside the RGV. We had to mix and match different sizes of cages in order for them to fit in between the machines. Next, we set the anchors down for the buffer stations, and the only thing they needed was to have the maintenance guys to drill holes to secure them down.
Also, the machine was ready for air, but we wouldn't be able to use it until we got the chiller. It seems like the chiller was the bottleneck of our installation.
Monday, November 7, 2011
Teledyne Day 6
Woke up 5:30AM to catch the 8:30AM flight to Mobile, Alabama today. By the time I got to the customer site it was already 3:00PM. This week I got to work with a different person from the company.
The machine finally had power, however, the chiller was not here yet, we decided not to turn the power on because we would have to jump all kinds of stuff (coolant tank, chiller, matrix magazine, and etc). It seemed like the stuff we needed to install hasn't arrived yet, and we tried our best to do whatever we can. We secured the toe clamps and the anchors down of the machine.
Friday, November 4, 2011
Teledyne Day 5
We arrived at the customer site 7AM just like any other day, yet the buffer stations hadn't arrived yet, and we were informed by the customer that the buffer stations would arrive around noon. In the mean while, we thought we had nothing to do again this morning. My co-worker was looking through all the installation parts, but he could not find the chiller and the reservoir for the coolant. We even asked the customer to double check the storage room of all the cargoes, but there weren't any chiller nor reservoir.
Later on, after we made a couple of phone calls back to the office. We found out that Japan had made a mistaken when they shipped the chiller and the reservoir. Apparently, those stuffs were with the magazine (Not the matrix magazine), and it was located in a storage in California.
Now we feared that even if we got the power for the machine on Monday, we wouldn't dare to operate it without either the chiller or the reservoir installed.
Finally it's Friday and I am glad that I get to fly back to Chicago today.
Later on, after we made a couple of phone calls back to the office. We found out that Japan had made a mistaken when they shipped the chiller and the reservoir. Apparently, those stuffs were with the magazine (Not the matrix magazine), and it was located in a storage in California.
Now we feared that even if we got the power for the machine on Monday, we wouldn't dare to operate it without either the chiller or the reservoir installed.
Finally it's Friday and I am glad that I get to fly back to Chicago today.
Thursday, November 3, 2011
Teledyne Day 4
Arrived at the customer site 7AM like usual, we asked the electricians about the power through the machine, and he told us that we would not get power until next Monday. Therefore, the things we could do was minimal. I installed the lamp inside the machine, and also the light outside the machine. Then I installed the cover that's below the table, I aslo put some silicone glue around just to double checked that coolant would not leak through the cover.
We pretty much did what we could do with all the stuff we had got, if only if the buffer stations were here, then we could have installed them. It seemed like today was another easy day, nothing much to do yet we had to look like we were doing something.
Wednesday, November 2, 2011
Teledyne Day 3
Got the the factory 7:00 AM in the morning, and the workers there had already moved the machine to where the center line was. We then asked them to move the machine to the center point, but before machine got to the center point we could see that the machine was already interfering the RGV system.
We double checked our measurements, however, everything was correct according to the machine layout blueprint. If our measurements were correct, then it must be something wrong with the blueprint. Shortly, we made a phone call back to the office, after some time we were told that the blueprints we had were for pre-minor changed machines, not for the minor changed machines. No wonder it did not look right when we tried to set the machine down.
Both of my coworker and I felt frustrated although it was not our fault to begin with. Nonetheless, we felt that customers must think we are dumb couldn't even read the blueprint correctly. As the results, we had to move the machine out of the way for the workers to re-drill the holes that were based on the REAL center lines.
Finally, we moved the machine to the real center point this time, and we began to house cleaning of the machine to get rid of the grease. We also took off the brackets off the machines. The rest of the stuff would require power to do, and that would be for tomorrow.
We double checked our measurements, however, everything was correct according to the machine layout blueprint. If our measurements were correct, then it must be something wrong with the blueprint. Shortly, we made a phone call back to the office, after some time we were told that the blueprints we had were for pre-minor changed machines, not for the minor changed machines. No wonder it did not look right when we tried to set the machine down.
Both of my coworker and I felt frustrated although it was not our fault to begin with. Nonetheless, we felt that customers must think we are dumb couldn't even read the blueprint correctly. As the results, we had to move the machine out of the way for the workers to re-drill the holes that were based on the REAL center lines.
Finally, we moved the machine to the real center point this time, and we began to house cleaning of the machine to get rid of the grease. We also took off the brackets off the machines. The rest of the stuff would require power to do, and that would be for tomorrow.
Tuesday, November 1, 2011
Teledyne Day 2
We got into the factory 7 in the morning, and the workers there started working at 5.
We continued looking at the layout sheet of the machines, and identified the center point of the CNC machines. There are 4 red triangles on the left, right, front, and rear of the machine. The center point will be the reference point for everything( RGV system, toe clamp, and etc...)
There was already a machine already running with the RGV system at the factory. In order to measure the distances from one machine to another machine, we had to use other points instead of the center point because the chip conveyor was in the way, there would be no way we can locate the center point of the running machine unless we had the chip conveyor removed. Therefore, we had to look at the layout sheet and do some simple addition and subtraction to figure out what to measure to obtain our distance between two machines.
Once we had that established, we began to mark the points on the foundation for the maintenance people to drill holes. While they were drilling the holes, we were called by customer to fix the servo alarm on another machine FA800.
The servo alarm only happened intermittently, and it was almost like the problem I encountered when I was in Acme Industries. We checked the phase current of Y-axis servo amplifier which was the one having problems, and we found out that the current varied drastically when the spindle went up and down. Up until this point, the machines showed no alarms so we could only make hypothesis that it was an electrical problem whereas mechanical problem would alarm out constantly.
This FA800 uses 16i Fanuc control with Toyoda servo amplifiers, therefore we would have to wait until the alarm shows up to read the exact alarm number.
We continued looking at the layout sheet of the machines, and identified the center point of the CNC machines. There are 4 red triangles on the left, right, front, and rear of the machine. The center point will be the reference point for everything( RGV system, toe clamp, and etc...)
There was already a machine already running with the RGV system at the factory. In order to measure the distances from one machine to another machine, we had to use other points instead of the center point because the chip conveyor was in the way, there would be no way we can locate the center point of the running machine unless we had the chip conveyor removed. Therefore, we had to look at the layout sheet and do some simple addition and subtraction to figure out what to measure to obtain our distance between two machines.
Once we had that established, we began to mark the points on the foundation for the maintenance people to drill holes. While they were drilling the holes, we were called by customer to fix the servo alarm on another machine FA800.
The servo alarm only happened intermittently, and it was almost like the problem I encountered when I was in Acme Industries. We checked the phase current of Y-axis servo amplifier which was the one having problems, and we found out that the current varied drastically when the spindle went up and down. Up until this point, the machines showed no alarms so we could only make hypothesis that it was an electrical problem whereas mechanical problem would alarm out constantly.
This FA800 uses 16i Fanuc control with Toyoda servo amplifiers, therefore we would have to wait until the alarm shows up to read the exact alarm number.
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