.21 Con-rods

[AndyBrown]

These 31 mm MAC 21 rods will also fit the CMB Valvola. I also made a few 30 mm rods that will get bushed for Novarossi and Picco.

 

[shoboat]

Andy,

Any pricing yet? It looks like you have a few to sell.

Let Us Know The Price Please,

Mark Sholund

 

[Buckshot]

And so it begins!

Keep it up AB!

-Buck-

 

[PHM Racing]

Looks good Andy B)

 

[Don Ferrette]

SWEET!!! B)

 

[SayMikey]

SWEET!!! B)

ALL BOW TO THE GREAT AND WONDERFUL OZ opps ANDY BROWN. aint them some nice looking rods. Man that machine has 2 keys I smell pistons baking.......mmmmmgood

 

[waltr]

Awesome!!

Lookin good Andy, that's a beautiful sight to see.

I have motors just waiting for those beauties just like so many others.

Thank you!!

 

[nuzum]

Awesome!!Lookin good Andy, that's a beautiful sight to see.

I have motors just waiting for those beauties just like so many others.

Thank you!!

mac 21 and picco p5 count me in

 

[tnrcboatracer]

It looked to me like a aw a couple headers in the pile, or were they 21 pistons????? Looks good! BTW how fast is the belt moving? It looks like it is spitting out a rod every minute, or so.

In machine terms, a minute is a very long time......like 60,000 miliseconds.

 

[AndyBrown]

It looked to me like a aw a couple headers in the pile, or were they 21 pistons????? Looks good! BTW how fast is the belt moving? It looks like it is spitting out a rod every minute, or so.

In machine terms, a minute is a very long time......like 60,000 miliseconds.

Those were remnants of 1/2" bar that sometimes come out of the machine with a rod.

The coveyor is on a start/stop timer. It moves about 16" after the part in ejected from the machine and then stops.

ONE MINUTE!! Don't we all wish! Rods would be really low in cost.

BTW MIKEY, The machine has THREE KEYS!!!! :lol: :lol: :lol:

 

[dave roach]

So Andy

What you are saying that your machine willn't make a rod in one minute.

Dave Roach

 

[AndyBrown]

So AndyWhat you are saying that your machine willn't make a rod in one minute.

Dave Roach

NOPE. But it does make them while I'm sleeping!

They do come off complete, including 3 oiling holes.

 

[Mike Hughes]

Hard at work! ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ Gotta love that. It is like your just dreaming up money.

Coool.

 

[AndyBrown]

Hard at work! ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ Gotta love that. It is like your just dreaming up money.Coool.

No! It's more like I worry all night that a tool might break. When running unmanned a broken tool can lead to MAJOR catastrophy!

 

[tnrcboatracer]

Tell me about it!!! I've gone through about $50,000 in tooling in the last 3 weeks. Running a second tool over the top of a busted 17mm carbide drill is hard on the second tool; it becomes a $2000 piece of scrap in seconds. I hear that you can set up most of those machines so that they can call you at home if there is an issue........

OK, indexing only would explain it, I thought the conveyor might be contiously running, My line does spit out a new engine head every 36 seconds. LOL. IT's amazing what $65MM worth of equipment can do.

 

[optimax]

You do not have tool check ability on this equiment? I use the feature on all tooling that has wear. I have never had a tool break due to cutting another broken tool in a part. If the tool breaks I get a alarm or a phone call ect. If I blew through 50g on tooling I would be out of business.

 

[tnrcboatracer]

You do not have tool check ability on this equiment? I use the feature on all tooling that has wear. I have never had a tool break due to cutting another broken tool in a part. If the tool breaks I get a alarm or a phone call ect. If I blew through 50g on tooling I would be out of business.

Yes we have tool detect, unfortunately when you go directly back into the same bore, the next program has already started before the tool detect flag is set. In our lines, tool detect is only set up to keep us from making a second bad part. But I have to admit, one of the $1700 tools was my mistake, I fat fingered a G-code. The tools don't like to cut in G00 rapid move mode (~24,000mm/min). Also, we only detect on drills, reamers, and taps. We don't detect on inserted cutters. But tool detect isn't always great, the whiskers can chip PCD tipped reamers, ask us how we know, and a chipped reamer is $800 scrap, as it can't be resharpened. We have some tools that are $8000 a pop, it's a diamond tipped boring bar that bores 4 cam bearings coaxial and at 2 different diametes to tolerances of 0.030mm. That's a 0.030mm wide window, not +/- 0.030mm.

We typically don't have appreciable tool wear, we change tools before wear is noticable, but we do sometimes break tools. All of out tooling is either Carbide, PCD, or CBN. All drills are solid carbide, many tools are custom bodies with multiple inserts. In this case a 17mm drill snapped with only 300 out of 10,000 cuts. The steel body on hte inserted boring tool that was the next process did not like running into the remains of the carbide drill. Our cells/lines run unattended, except for tool changers and quality checks. THe tooling cost I quoted incudes the $18k in scrap parts that occurred due to a tooling setup mistake by the tool Engineer. Darn drill walked in the collet and cut the rough hole too deep. In one part, the hole depth varied over 1.3mm. As the process Engineer, I assume that tools don't move in their collets. We made 188 bad parts that had to be scrapped. THe eror was found during the DAily CMM check. We also CMM each stage on the line atleast 1/shift. We have 12 CMM machines dedicated to machining and 4ea in hte QA layout lab.

With 6 lines making 4 different cyl blocks, 4 different cylinder heads, and 3 different cranks, our tooling budget is several million $/yr. The machining plant I work at is a $600MM investment. We have the capacity to machine and assemble over 1MM engines per year, as well as forgings, castings, and machined parts for our sister assembly/machining plants. If you ever get a chance to tour an automotive machining plant, you should definitly take it. I feel like a kid in a candy store just about every day. It is very challenging work.

 

[AndyBrown]

I have tool detection and can also probe each part for tolerance and the machine will adjust the tool wear compensation. for the next cut.

But when you are cutting a small part between two chucks it adds to cycle time.

I got through 400 rods without any issues.

A few years ago I visited the Picco factory and from a conversation with Alberto Picco I'm making rods at about the same cycle time as they are.

 

[tnrcboatracer]

That's a good run, Andy. How are the 21 pistons coming? there should be a box with my name on it somewhere in hte shop with a P/L that needs a new piston. No hurry, just when you get a chance.

We also have probe heads, but they are to compensate for ball screw length changes due to temperature. Sometimes they are more of a pain than they are worth. I also have a few stations that are cut relative to the part, so we probe a datum on the part, and then calculate the cut depth. OUr on line gaging is dedicated and consists of air sensing bore gages.

 

[Terry Keeley]

Great stuff Andy, good you got that expensive machine makin' parts! Care to share any more pix of it in operation?