Denford Software & Machines

Hi Guys, We have a VMC 1300 in our Engineering dept, poor thing has been working overtime recently!

I was thinking about some intereting projects for our students, and was wondering if there was any way in V5 Milling to plumb in a feedback from an Auto tool setter, and possibly program in a closed loop control to run before/after a cut to re-set the tools offsets in both the X/Y & Z axis?

At the moment we just do this manually, but it might be fun (or impossible) to add this feature. If it were possible to somehow communicate with the program I'd imagine it wouldn't be beyond the wit of man to code up and auto edge finder too, perhaps.

I guess it all lays on if it is possible to feed this information into the program.

any thoughts?

Regards, John.

East Berkshire College

We've experimented in the past with a tool length checking switch.
It worked well and seemed to repeat reliably - it worked pretty much like the homing switch does.

The VR Milling software wolud need updating/checking in order to activate the length check sequence.
More testing also needs to be done as to what happens when the switch is not made, or made too early (ie the tool has come loose or steppers have lost position)

I feel setting the X and Y automatically would need something else a bit more involved...maybe something like the laser we use to scan 3D objects could be made to run a routine which runs a diagonal across the working area in order to locate the bottom/left of the workpiece is. You'd have to then calibrate the X and Y distance from laser to tool centreline in order to update the work offsets automatically. The main issue will be that the VMC has a greater Z movement than the maximum scanning distance of 150mm (IIRC)