Major wreck

A couple of weeks ago something happened to me that I still think about every time I hit the cycle start button. On our Integrex 1850 (ONE FINE PIECE OF EQUIPMENT)I was running down a right angle head into a bore, milling a slot on a 1700 inch radius 11 inches deep, for slots with about .0025 crown per side. The cutter began cutting and showed correctly on the distance to go and at about 9.5 inches to go the machine dropped the distance to go and in a feed rate that seemed faster than rapid the machine tried to slam the Z axis thru the part somewhere under the machine unfortunately the b Axis head housing slammed into the top of my part so hard that the hex nut and bolt that I used as a standoff under the part was molded into one piece and pressed it .250 shorter than it was when It started. The machine was down and I could not fiqure out how it had happened because this was a proven process on 3 of our other machines. Hindsight being 20/20 I looked on the graphics ,which looked good until I noticed that a cut that should have taken one minute, took only 6 seconds,it didnt show that it would cut over one inch correctly and then slam into the part. It was as if the machine didnt know where it was. A call was made to our distributer for some help and the next day two guys from Mazak, one japanese, showed up with a software upgrade,Mazak rerouted them to us after our wreck, they were working their way around the U.S. upgrading software to version 8 on all E-machines.Our machine had version 2 They wanted to see it happen again so they could report back to Japan. I raised up the G54 20 inches and with one hand on E stop and one hand on feed hold I recreated the scene and watched as 5 people stood in utter amazement at what they had just seen I stoped the machine 18 inches away from the top of the empty pallet no distance to go and full rapid. The one Mazak guy offered free underwear on Mazak. They installed the new software and mysteriously my graphics showed the cut as one minute and after a very nervous single block rundown it was proven that the problem had disapeared. Wow the machines damage was extensive but we have great a Mazak service guy and after four days he straighted the machine back out to as good as new condition.

Just a heads up to all of you...

Hello E man,
We also have an e1850V. You are right , nice machines.
Ours has had two nasty incidents.
One similar to yours. Running a proven 3D EIA program the machine slammed into job and bent machine out of shape. We took program out of machine and used on FJV and is still running fine on FJV so we know it is not program.( plus we had proven on e1850V already )
Second time was when we were using tool breakage detector. If the tool is used twice in a program , and tool breakage detector is used on that tool the Index line at top of prgram is ignored when tool is brought out the second time. Instead of following index line and going up to a safe Z height before indexing , machine does a straight line move from tool change door , through table , through the job to position tool is supposed to be machining. As you can imagine trying to rapid traverse through table and job does not do much for machine alignment !
We don't run EIA programs , or use tool breakage any more. Costs too much to fix machine.
Mazak quoted $124,000.00 for last repair. ( C axis is bent )
I am not sure what version ours is. We bought it in 2004 .
I was going to attach a screen shot of version page from e1850V machine but do not know how to attach photos on this forum.

Holy crap!

And I thought I had problems...

We have not had much luck running EIA on our Mazaks. We used to make racing yacht keels on our V100. The machine would swap X and Y numbers every now and then.
It would cut a 3D shape back and forth ( in Y ) and then suddenly cut along the keel ( in X ) cutting a big groove where there should not be one ! The error could be seen on graphics display. To fix we would switch machine off , then back on and problem would be gone. The exact same program could then be run again without error ! Big groove down keel would still be there however ....
We now have a policy of switching all of our machines off and back on again before EVERY EIA cycle to try to prevent this. very time consuming !
All of our Integrex machines have given problems , even with Mazatrol programs.

Really not normal.... if we were forced to do that i think every Mazak machine of our shop would have passed trough flamming torch or something.

All
I just had a terrible wreck on our 1550, This one is unbelievable. I was running a proven EIA program and decided to watch the graphics for the next job to be setup. It was an extra long program so I decided to do a path restart on the graphics. I did the search to the block that I wanted to watch and as soon as I hit the input button on the last box, instead of the little box that usually pops up with the active M codes, the machine took the 12 inch slotting cutter that was running and tried to go thru the part that was running. I know it sounds crazy, but I was able to replicate the wreck several times, with G54 backed out and telling the machine that it had a tool in the spindle when it didn't. Mazak had a repairman at our facility at the time, I made him come and watch and he couldn't believe it but he called his boss and they brought in the latest Main A and B software and it fixed the problem. Needless to say the next day they loaded the newest software versions on all of our Integrex's.

E-man, where are you located, geographicy? I'd like to get more info from the service side, this is a serious issue. Please advise. thanks

nzmazakman, i have a hard time buying that story, but I;ve seen strange things happen. PLC controls escape sequence at tool change cycle, so it has nothing realy to do with programing, EIA or Mazatrol. I'm not saying you are not reporting the facts, and please don't be offended, but post PLC version, software version, from diagnostic page for me, it's not that many characters, and I only need the very end of each, like the last 5 digits or letters. Main A, main B, and ladder. Thanks, maybe we can prevent another crash. Thanks for your support and info.

No one else believed it either until they saw it for themselves. We are in Lafayette, Indiana. I will have to contact my Mazak guy about the software versions, I didn't keep anything, I was just glad to have it fixed. Two different service guys saw this happen.

What seemed strange was if the machine was in a rapid move, it would just give a soft limit alarm and keep running, butif it was in G01 it would dive for the part.

you guys shouldn't need to have a wreck if Mazak and their agents were doing their jobs properly and updated software for all of their customers when it became available. let me know if that ever happens, it'd be a first.

Sure thing gofastjohn, we'll just travel all over the world, every day, and update everyone's software on the thousands and thousands of machines out there, weather customer's are having problems or running just fine. Then, when we have a new software version, we'll do it all over again. At least we will be helping out the struggling airlines. I'll try to do my job "PROPERLY!" oh, and I'll bet we fixed e-man's machine for free.

And lets not forget the parameter changes that often occur with software updates. I had a small crash running a program that's always run flawlesly before. Mazak inadvertantly changed the parameter that controls whether the tool goes to a clearance point or the approach point on a multiple depth cutting operation using C axis milling. My poor brand new Mitsubishi endmill didn't last 10 minutes...

Please be careful doing a restart on the graphics while the machine is cutting. For some reason I figured that I would be okay to do this on our pro control 1060 even though the Matrix control had wrecked when I did it. Mazak came in and updated the software on all the Matrix controllers but not on our pro controls. They did not think it was a problem, well it is. As soon as I hit the input key on the graphics restart where the m code box usually pops up ...Wham...The machine jumped so fast into the part that there was no time to react. The problem is that after updating the software version they asked me to replicate the wreck, without the $10,000 right angle head and $15,000 part. Imagine everyone's surprise when it happened again. They told me the problem will be looked at in Japan and not to do a restart on the graphics until they can resolve the situation.

I don't know about doing the job "PROPERLY!" I just know that as far as Mazak service,these guys are always top notch and we greatly appreciate them for all they do for us. I only wish all machine tool builders would do the same.

Thanks E-Man, at least someone appriciates our efforts.