Hi Greg,
Thanks for the excellent tips and suggestions.
The HAAS Tech guy did use a ring gauge to set the probe up with. I have since ordered one so if I have to recalibrate the probe in the future I will have one for that purpose.
There was a lot going on during the installation and I may have missed some of the steps but one thing that he took extra care with was checking to see that the tool probe was exactly flat in both the X & Y coordinates. He used a highly sensitive indicator and ran it in both directions. The tool probe was well guarded from the factory and it measured out perfectly as the eye and gauge could see and no adjustments were needed. Guess it was my lucky day.
I did an exercise similar to the ball pen on my last CNC Knee mill. Wrote some simple programs and took all the Z motion out of the program and slowly raised the table until it actually drew the part on the selected surface. In may case it as MDF.
My first chips on this machine were with MDF. I slowed down the rapids on the machine and programmed in very slow feeds when I applied the toolpaths to the sample parts I was running today. I always run the verification/simulation program in my ONECNCXR2 Milling Advantage software package from several different view planes to "hopefully" ensure that I don't have any radical movements that could cause trouble on the machine.
You guys and gals are the best. Many thanks for your continued help.
John  |