Originally Posted by HuFlungDung  I wish I'd seen the probing thing in action. My noob question would be "How does the machine know when it is anywhere close to where you wish to touch off of, and how does it know which direction to move, etc." I can imagine this taking place in 'slo-mo' but it can't be all that slow or you guys would be complaining about it  |
It's pretty simple. There's a bunch of different templates for different ways to set your zeros: probe bore, probe boss, probe vise corner, probe external corner, probe internal pocket, etc etc.
All of them have you hand jog the probe to a certain place, for example, if you want to set your offsets to the center of a block, you would handle jog the probe to the rough center of the block, anywhere up to 0.4" above the surface.
Then it'll ask you the x and y dimensions, and the z height above the part. You enter a rough approximation of the size of the block, it starts from center, moves to the left of the block by a bit more than 1/2 of the X value you entered, comes in until it touches off, backs off, and comes in more slowly and touches off again for more accuracy.
Then it retracts and does the same thing with the positive x side of the block, and the + and - Y sides.
You can set your x y offsets and tool offsets in a fraction of the time it would take you to use an edgefinder and gage block/pin/other favorite method.
Originally Posted by Geof So how long does it take to enter the offsets for 10 tools? |
It depends if you do length only or length and diameter.
It will only auto sequence length. If length only, maybe 2-3 minutes for 10 tools.
If length and diameter, maybe 2-3x that time.