Brother Speedio Training RX450 with Videos
Brother Speedio Training, I have always loved brother machines, the first ones I worked on were in the 90’s and they brought a whole new meaning to the expression “shit off a stick”.
I think we coined a new phrase “shit off a greasy stick”
I was at Josiah Parkes and Sons, a famous lock maker in England.
My task was to program a macro for cutting keys.
True Story
The foreman came around and asked me how long it would be before they could cut the awaiting keys. The keys had special numbers so that no one could tell where they were going. These were high security and often for prisons and generally pretty secure places.
The foreman came back and said he’d told his boss who had in turn contacted the customer. He said “do you want to be the one to tell Buckingham Palace they have to wait for their keys”.
Anyway needless to say we had to get a move on if we were to keep our heads still attached to our necks.
This machine was pretty small I don’t remember the model number anyway fuckin quick it was.
Speedio Gonzales
Recently I got to work on a two year old circa 2023 and it was fuckin awesome. Speedy Gonzales was a cartoon character and also it’s a title of a Pat Boone song
You should checkout this song boy we had some fun in the 60’s (not that I’m that old). Pat Boone not to be confused with Pat Boner the porn star.
Everything about this machine is great and they say in life it’s the simple things that count and here is one of em.
The Door Stops It
Yes open the door while it’s running and it stops. “So fuckin what” you say. Well if you shut it again, all you do is press cycle start and it just carries on. The guys I was training loved it and it is amazing.
Try that on your Fanuc and your in for an almighty bang. So simple but wow it’s great. But why the fuck don’t all CNC Machines do this?
Brother Speedio TrainingMenu Buttons
It has these buttons
You can set any screen to a shortcut button. When you press 1 or 2 it give you a list of your shortcuts and when you input the number it jumps straight to that screen. Really good feature well worth setting up.
It has a random tool changer but unlike a lot of machines it clearly says on the screen exactly where each tool is. So when you go to the tool conveyor it’s easy to know what is what. There is a simple to use table that designates each tool to a pocket. It has built in logic so you can’t assign a tool to an already used pocket. If you input 0 as the tool number it will display CAP meaning the pocket is empty.
Brother Speedio Training Magazine Rotation
There is a tool chain round the back of the machine and you can index this with these buttons
Only one step at a time and all other doors need to be closed.
Their is a tool to extract the tools but you can quite easily pull them out by hand. It is possible to miss load them so be sure they are fully seated in their relevant pocket.
Blum Tool Measure Table Probe
Mine had a tool measure table probe so it was quick and easy to set tools. There’s one on each table so you don’t need to worry which pallet you have in the machine. There is no built in interface for setting tools so you have to call out programs to do this. A little bit of macro knowledge and you can set these up to be quite fast.
Measurement Probe
My machine also had the Blum touch probe system. Unfortunately we didn’t have all the information on the Blum cycles. A quick email to them and we had them all. Shame the machine didn’t have it’s own probing interface.
Given time I could have written some macros to make this a lot easier.
Single Point
G65 P8700 X10. W54.
This would move in the X positive direction and put the offset into G54. The X10. is how far it will move to try and find the X point.
G65 P8700 Z-10. K-10. W54.
This would move in the Z negative direction and put the offset into G54. Using I for X, J for Y and K for Z. This K-10. means the Z will be set 10mm above the touch point. Ideal for if you are probing inside a bore that is 10mm deep.
If you do use these probes in a program make sure you always use a protected move to get the probe in position this is just like a regular move except the probe will trigger and stop if it touches anything.
Unfortunately this does not include the body of the probe. To protect that you need one of these.
It’s called a Halo and it will trigger instead of you hitting the body. That is in any axis X Y or Z
Visit this website to check them out and maybe buy one.
It’s a great website with loads of other interesting stuff too.
Macro of Course
Yes this machine has macro and if you understand Fanuc/Haas/Mazak macro then this will be a piece of piss.
Manual Pallet Change
This is very well thought out, just press the button. it will safely retract the tool and rotate the pallet. Oh and don’t forget to close both doors first.
Brother Handwheel
Just the normal stuff except that dreaded off button ignore it at your peril. I call it the suicide button because that is what it will make you do.
If you don’t switch it to off loads and loads of shit will not happen. So just remember to turn it off to avoid massive frustration.
Graphics
So disappointing, what the fuck are these people doing I mean were not behind the times here were fuckin hieroglyphically, mummified, cave man shit, platform soled miles out of touch.
Is it me, I just don’t get it. There must be a button on these machines that I just don’t know about. You press it and suddenly something comes on the screen that looks like a part.
You need a wild, wild imagination to even visualise how this bunch of jumbled up lines can represent this intricate piece of engineering we are making on this precision machine with submicron accuracy.
Enough said and with that I will shut the holy fuck up.
Editing
I love the editing on this machine
Make sure you use these, it’s a really quick way to get to the top and bottom of your program. I does search for line numbers too but I can’t really see how you would know what line to search for. It’s probably easier to add some N numbers and search for them.
One really annoying thing is that you have to keep saving your work so it’s a bit like a word documents except it doesn’t remind you to save it when you leave. If this really pisses you off then you can change a couple of parameters and it will work just like a Fanuc.
Checkout user parameter 107 and 108 to adjust this. Please don’t tell anyone it was me who suggested this.
Contact me for Brother Speedio Training
Brother Speedio Training Close Screen
Press Completion Mode
Now you have three choices
F6 Overwrite save
This will save program and you stay on this screen
F3 Cancel w/o saving changes
This will leave the screen but will revert back to before you altered anything.
F0 Cancel with saving changes
This will save your changes and leave the screen
Mmmmmm all a bit confusing and easy to fuck up
Shift Key
You spend years on Fanuc and get used to the keyboard then you come on this mmm. The shift key has to be held down while you press the key you want. Bit annoying but I’m sure we’ll all get used to it.
You just need a wide hand sort of a Chopin hands
Brother Speedio Training Programming
The programming of this machine is much like a Fanuc control main differences are the added cycles that Brother created, sub program call is the same M98 P500 to call program O500.
Local subroutines are called using H for the N number you wish to search for. Much the same a s Haas and Fanuc local subroutines.
It also has G12 and G13 for circular pocket milling which is very useful.
Running Brother Speedio
If all the lights are off then the program will run on whichever pallet is in the machine.
There is a setting screen where you designate a program to each pallet. Now you can select pallet one or pallet two or run both.
To run just one pallet for example pallet one, pallet one will need to be outside the machine when you start. Once it has run pallet one it will change it for pallet two and stop ready for you to load a new part on pallet one.
Overall Impression
I love this machine, some annoying things but a pleasure to operate. I think Brother want this machine to please and it does.
After a while you get used to it’s high speed and it has plenty of built in safety features that stop you crashing it.
The pallet system is easy to set up once you find the setting page but this is where your shortcut menu keys become useful.
Graphics?? Well what can I say except it’s as bad as all the others.
Brother Speedio Training
Contact us if you need training.