Diving in to ATC?

[Nealeb]

On Nealeb Said:

…I haven’t had any chipping problems with my tool setter…

Neither have I; chipped tools occurred when I was setting zero by touching off directly on the workpiece. Chipping only occurred with carbide tools.

My electronic tool setter is similar, it does a quick touch and then a slower one to get better precision. Since I bought it from Tormach it is integrated into PathPilot.

I wrote my own postprocessor; in fact I have two, one with tool change and one without. The one without is needed when I am using the high speed spindle which uses ER11 collets, so doesn’t have a repeatable tool change system. In general that is not a problem as most operations needing the high speed spindle only use one tool.

Julie

[JasonBModerator @jasonb]

I’ve only chipped tools when I have hit the wrong button.

I just use a 20mm block but raise the tool until it just slips under the cutter, lowering the tool onto a block is more likely to damage the tool and block if you come down a bit too far.

[Steve355Participant @steve355]

Having looked into this some more, I don’t think it’s an impossible project by any means. What I’ve discovered is that the fourth axis (A axis) which I don’t use, can be used to turn a carousel. I would just need to add another motor.

in addition, I am typically not using flood coolant so I can use the output port for controlling that, to act a pneumatic switch, which would control the pick up or drop off of the tool.

some other standalone controllers have more output ports, unfortunately mine doesn’t, so I would have to hijack the coolant port.

obviously a bit of code would need to be written, but Grok assures me that it can do it for me (or at least it could give me a Headstart)

Perhaps not a project for now, but if I do find myself needing to do a lot of of CNC then it is certainly a possible thing to do with my set up.

[Author]

Posts