Allylearm
Established Member
Now before you read anything I am a Weinig man and I used to be Wadkin, when its dealing with Moulders I cannot see past Weinig. So I am totally biased. I purchased this just before recession bit and other than our sister company new build we have not purchased since. It came in at under £80k I do not know what it now sits at.
Anyway I had a Unimat 23 purchased from new 1996 by a sister company that closed and it was moved with some other plant to existing position. My main issue was speed of setup, I saw the new tooling holder without shafts on a demonstration prior to us looking to replace. With the CNC setup you could auto move the heads and the machine could recognise the tool. So in theory you could speed between moulds to be run. I wanted to run smaller batches so eliminating shrinkage in assembly. If run what we needed my theory was that it would not shrink as much as it was causing us issues of running more end panels to finish certain tasks. So I looked at the Powermat all the above plus it was faster, this did work out and though not just in time production it was close as.
Prior to purchase I had been going through replacing cutters to tipped cutters due to cost and accuracy. Not that I am saying that you can get accuracy from serrated cutters/standrad tooling profiles but you best to profile on the head or you end up one doing the cutting and the others acting as balance. Plus labour cost of doing the profiling and sharpening was getting close to losing money and time I did not have so I needed to address sooner rather later. If you did not go for replacement tips route you would need Grinder/setting stands/Profile shaper which could add up to £50k to overall cost which is abit ouch (shown at end of vid).
So with the Powermat and it's switchable heads and no shafts, it is like tool changers on CNC Router they have a tool holder to hold the cutter block. So in this respect I was in front of this and did not have such a big outlay, only on holders though it did come with a good load to start with. It was faster in operation and was most importantly quieter as it came with sound proofing improvement option. A big thing in my workshop at the time as my Resaw and Moulders and sometimes the Beamsaw were my noise makers I had one long term goal to try and get well below 85db in full working conditions. Stil lnot there but that is another story.
Anyway this machine was fitted and even though staff were not convinced of the new fangles fitted in operation and use it won them over. It can be fitted with a web cam so you can take pictures of tools and store them in the memory or you can watch what they are doing on the machine from the office if you wanted. It is faster to tool change and with tersa and lighter blocks it is quieter than last model so was good in this respect. Finish is superb and I had the option of straightening table fitted.
This is not my machine we have only six head this has more but principle is same and setup mode and operation. The tool holder cart in vid is expensive and usefull, we made our own.
http://youtu.be/HQxRWDh_24M
Anyway I had a Unimat 23 purchased from new 1996 by a sister company that closed and it was moved with some other plant to existing position. My main issue was speed of setup, I saw the new tooling holder without shafts on a demonstration prior to us looking to replace. With the CNC setup you could auto move the heads and the machine could recognise the tool. So in theory you could speed between moulds to be run. I wanted to run smaller batches so eliminating shrinkage in assembly. If run what we needed my theory was that it would not shrink as much as it was causing us issues of running more end panels to finish certain tasks. So I looked at the Powermat all the above plus it was faster, this did work out and though not just in time production it was close as.
Prior to purchase I had been going through replacing cutters to tipped cutters due to cost and accuracy. Not that I am saying that you can get accuracy from serrated cutters/standrad tooling profiles but you best to profile on the head or you end up one doing the cutting and the others acting as balance. Plus labour cost of doing the profiling and sharpening was getting close to losing money and time I did not have so I needed to address sooner rather later. If you did not go for replacement tips route you would need Grinder/setting stands/Profile shaper which could add up to £50k to overall cost which is abit ouch (shown at end of vid).
So with the Powermat and it's switchable heads and no shafts, it is like tool changers on CNC Router they have a tool holder to hold the cutter block. So in this respect I was in front of this and did not have such a big outlay, only on holders though it did come with a good load to start with. It was faster in operation and was most importantly quieter as it came with sound proofing improvement option. A big thing in my workshop at the time as my Resaw and Moulders and sometimes the Beamsaw were my noise makers I had one long term goal to try and get well below 85db in full working conditions. Stil lnot there but that is another story.
Anyway this machine was fitted and even though staff were not convinced of the new fangles fitted in operation and use it won them over. It can be fitted with a web cam so you can take pictures of tools and store them in the memory or you can watch what they are doing on the machine from the office if you wanted. It is faster to tool change and with tersa and lighter blocks it is quieter than last model so was good in this respect. Finish is superb and I had the option of straightening table fitted.
This is not my machine we have only six head this has more but principle is same and setup mode and operation. The tool holder cart in vid is expensive and usefull, we made our own.
http://youtu.be/HQxRWDh_24M
