Roland DWX-51D and DWX-52DCi milling issues... or is it millbox?

npdynamite

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Hello, I'm looking to see if anybody else has any experience with this or if anybody has any thoughts on what might be causing it, so far our support lines haven't been able to help.

When milling with either the Roland 51 or 52 we are getting really noticeable parting line issues and the milling quality on the margin side of the parting line tends to be extremely rough and sometimes also has margin chipping. The results were even worse on the 52 and support had us send it back to Roland to have the Y axis ball screw replaced. The pictured results are from both mills and after the 52 was fixed. We have tried both 2019 and 2020 strategies in Millbox some provided by Zahn and some coming directly from Roland. So far those haven't made a difference. I have used Roland mills for over 10 years and have seen them mill much better than this and the fact that two different mills are getting the same results indicates to me that it is likely a strategy issue. I should also mention that we have tried different burs including what is recommended by Zahn (our reseller)

We have also done various other trouble shooting things such as calibrations and cleaning and greasing the poles that the milling part slides on (sorry for not knowing the technical terms here)

Anyways, any thoughts on what may be going on would be appreciated.

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npdynamite

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Thank you for your responses.
those small chipping can be caused by bad quality milling burs.
We are using the burs that we are recommended and that the strategies were created for. We have also tried some other burs just to eliminate this possibility and they did not change our results
the big line in the middle of your bridge is a calibration issue.
This was the first thing I suggested when I got involved (I don't run the mills generally or get too involved with them generally unless we are having problems) we have already run multiple calibrations amongst about every other service we know how to do or can get our support to tell us how to do. Also the 52 literally just came back from Roland and they said that they did a full calibration there and we have run more calibrations since then.

If the parting line were a calibration issue, wouldn't we also see an occlusion height problem?

Also I should add that we are seeing the same thing from our Roland DWX-50. It is only being used for wax and it seems a little bit less noticeable but I think that's just because of the softness of the material
 
CoolHandLuke

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calibration issues can be related to one or several axes, not necessarily one in particular, this would be an X/Y issue instead of a Z issue, though the chipping would be part of that too, if it was a Z issue. as Roland's really don't have much on board for a computer, examine the computer operating it, and its cabling. looks for kinks in the wires, or pc power supply issues.
 
npdynamite

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calibration issues can be related to one or several axes, not necessarily one in particular, this would be an X/Y issue instead of a Z issue, though the chipping would be part of that too, if it was a Z issue. as Roland's really don't have much on board for a computer, examine the computer operating it, and its cabling. looks for kinks in the wires, or pc power supply issues.
ok, I understood that the calibrations can be on different axes, though I'm now thinking my understanding of how to identify which axes is off may be wrong. Or I may be just looking at this problem wrong. I believe we have done all of the calibrations that we are able to do here, but I will look into that further tomorrow if there is anything that could have been missed.

As for the computer, I'm going to look into potential problems. Why would these types of issues (power supply or bad cabling) have these types of results? I don't doubt that they could be related, I just want to understand the problem better so that I have a better understanding of what I'm looking for. Would running computer diagnostics on various components potentially uncover something here? Also a note on that topic, when these mills were set up I believe there was an issue with the cable transferring data to them being too long and causing problems. From my understanding we used a powered USB cable to get around this issue. I believe all of the mills are utilizing this set up.

While I was typing this my mill operator mentioned that there was something in the user manual for the the 52 about a manual calibration that can be used if the X/Y calibration is off that he hasn't been able to get an answer from support on how to use so there may be further calibrations we could do. If that is the case I'm guessing it is where the solution lies.
 
CoolHandLuke

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calibrations have to save somewhere, and i'm not sure if the rolands store it onboard or on the host computer. in either case it doesn't seem to be saving properly, or your calibrations maybe getting worse. calibrations go worse when your fixturing is dirty or damaged - remember you are using a tool to touch very specific areas and measure points, if you have dirt on that area, you're measuring a bad calibration. if you have a divot in that area, you are measuring wrong too.

wherever/however that calibration is saved, it doesn't seem to be holding. you may have worn belts on your motors if the motors use belts. i remember the dwx50 used belts.
 
JMN

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Is it consistantly differently off? If so, it's a mechanical issue. Bad winding on a stepper woukd give odd errrors like this too.
 
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what's total hour it ran?
maybe time to replace spindle
 
CoolHandLuke

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I don't see the person saying brand new? :D
you are right, please excuse me, i thought he said the 52 was replaced, i reread it he said it was "fixed" evidently not. so yes it would be very likely the spindle would need replacing.
 
npdynamite

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calibrations have to save somewhere, and i'm not sure if the rolands store it onboard or on the host computer. in either case it doesn't seem to be saving properly, or your calibrations maybe getting worse. calibrations go worse when your fixturing is dirty or damaged - remember you are using a tool to touch very specific areas and measure points, if you have dirt on that area, you're measuring a bad calibration. if you have a divot in that area, you are measuring wrong too.

wherever/however that calibration is saved, it doesn't seem to be holding. you may have worn belts on your motors if the motors use belts. i remember the dwx50 used belts.
We're going to dig further into calibrations today, we suspect there may be more in depth calibrations we can do. I did talk to the technician about the past calibrations and he said that everything has been cleaned thoroughly before doing any sort of calibration. We will keep this in mind as we proceed though.
Is it consistantly differently off? If so, it's a mechanical issue. Bad winding on a stepper woukd give odd errrors like this too.
Sort of? The nature of the bad milling is always the same, but I would say the intensity changes. That bridge had a more obvious parting line than others. But it always seems to be a bad parting line and rough milling to one side of it or the other. I originally thought it was only milling rough on the margin side but that doesn't seem to be the case.

what's total hour it ran?
maybe time to replace spindle
We have 1000 hrs on the spindle and my understanding it should last for 2000 hrs.

As a last note, we are seeing this across 3 different mills all being different rolands. That is the only reason I suspect that it isn't necessarily a mechanical issue with the mills. Also while the 52 isn't new, it did just come back from roland for service
 
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Since you have it on all your Rolands, I don't think it's the mills... what I would try, ask them to delete the millbox, and put it on the computer again... if they haven't try that yet...
 
npdynamite

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Since you have it on all your Rolands, I don't think it's the mills... what I would try, ask them to delete the millbox, and put it on the computer again... if they haven't try that yet...
Unfortunately this has already been tried, but thank you
 
tehnik

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I actually have the same lines in the middle on all materials coming out of 2 out of 3 DWX-52DC (third is DCi). I have cleaned the machine, cleaned and re-greased rails and screws, calibrated, changed tools etc. I also changed collet for one machine. Nothing helps. The quality varies but is not without these lines. Both mills have around 1400hr of spindle time. Now I am waiting for yearly full cleaning of the machines, that is due from January (corona). When contacting seller of the milling machines, I only hear talk about cleaning and calibrating - well it is not working. If I asked about worn out ball screws - there was no answer. I am actually thinking to move away from roland, I don't thing they are bad machines but maybe they are not meant for too many units a day. Also big role here is support - for now I have had this lines problem since september - it started with one and now has on the second machine also. Third is showing some already.
 
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npdynamite

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I actually have the same lines in the middle on all materials coming out of 2 out of 3 DWX-52DC (third is DCi). I have cleaned the machine, cleaned and re-greased rails and screws, calibrated, changed tools etc. I also changed collet for one machine. Nothing helps. The quality varies but is not without these lines. Both mills have around 1400hr of spindle time. Now I am waiting for yearly full cleaning of the machines, that is due from January (corona). When contacting seller of the milling machines, I only hear talk about cleaning and calibrating - well it is not working. If I asked about worn out ball screws - there was no answer. I am actually thinking to move away from roland, I don't thing they are bad machines but maybe they are not meant for too many units a day. Also big role here is support - for now I have had this lines problem since september - it started with one and now has on the second machine also. Third is showing some already.
Good to know, I'll certainly post if we get it sorted.

Right now we are doing more calibrating, there are further manual calibrations that could be done that we were not getting information on prior so we are pursuing that. Also we are relocating the mills as the bench they are set up on is not stable enough for what it is being used for.

Myself and the other tech who are working on this somewhat recently took over the milling and we are trying to sort through a bunch of things that had been previously maybe never properly diagnosed/set up so we are trying to get our milling to where it should be
 
tehnik

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I am waiting for separate tables for the mills. I have two on one table, that is connected to the wall and the latest DCi has it own table, but it is flimsy. The first two mills are however always been on one table and there were no problem with that.
 
npdynamite

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I am waiting for separate tables for the mills. I have two on one table, that is connected to the wall and the latest DCi has it own table, but it is flimsy. The first two mills are however always been on one table and there were no problem with that.
We currently also have two on one table which is connected to the wall. We have had better milling results than current with this set up so I don't believe it has anything to do with the parting line, but it's something to eliminate and it definitely could be playing a role in the rough areas and margin chipping. Either way eliminating potential future problems is always good regardless
 
npdynamite

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I actually have the same lines in the middle on all materials coming out of 2 out of 3 DWX-52DC (third is DCi). I have cleaned the machine, cleaned and re-greased rails and screws, calibrated, changed tools etc. I also changed collet for one machine. Nothing helps. The quality varies but is not without these lines. Both mills have around 1400hr of spindle time. Now I am waiting for yearly full cleaning of the machines, that is due from January (corona). When contacting seller of the milling machines, I only hear talk about cleaning and calibrating - well it is not working. If I asked about worn out ball screws - there was no answer. I am actually thinking to move away from roland, I don't thing they are bad machines but maybe they are not meant for too many units a day. Also big role here is support - for now I have had this lines problem since september - it started with one and now has on the second machine also. Third is showing some already.
We also started seeing this at a similar time frame, did you happen to update your strategies or change anything else at that time?
 

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