R8 automatic tool changer

[philbur]

The taper on the end of the tool shank is something I suggested earlier. Thoses arms still look like a weakness in the design to me though. Take a look at a few commercial tool changers for ideas. Do any use a similar arm concept. If not why not.

Having design tools is one thing, what is much more important is following the correct steps in the design process. For example, what are the primary functions of the arms, how well do they fulfil those functions, what alternative might fulfil those functions better. It is a much better approach to look for why a particular concept will not work rather than why it will.

Regards
Phil

Originally Posted by daedalus I have yet to actually see a tormach tooling system up close, but could you put a very small chamfer on the end of the parallel shank, and then use the compliance in the arms to locate the tool correctly during pickup? This would relax the positioning constraint to having to get the top of the taper section under the parallel bore. On the prototyping front, i have cosmos here, so will be doing a fair bit of analysis before i build anything. Im still only doing background research at the moment.

[Willbird]

The FADAL tool changer is pretty simple, it uses a wheel to hold the tools, moves the whole wheel TO the spindle to grab a tool, moves the spindle UP to get it off the tool, rotates in the necxt tool, moves the spindle down to grab the tool, moves the whole wheel away.

You need more Z travel for this but there are only two motions needed for the tool changer, one rotary to postion the wheel, one linear to move the whole wheel in under the spindle. It avoids the complexity of needing to rotate a pot 90 degrees to put it in the same place as the toolchange arm like some systems do...or move a pot to standby position like some others do....there are no pots, just the round wheel with pockets cut and simple methods to hold the V flange in place

Another nice thing about their system is you can just type SETT0 <thats a zero) and resequance the whole wheel so that you can leave tools for a job setup in there, later to go back just spin it around and SETT0 again and reload the offsets, good to go :-).

Bill

[krymis]

guys for the past year i have been working on something. I was thinking of building an arm that houses a 12 pot rotating carassel. That carassel is moved into position by an electric linear actuator with stop switch and positioned stop blocks for the alignment. The arm is mounted to the lag bolt holes and secured. there would be a servo driving the carassel with an encoder. Now i was using the encoder and a macro to state the proper alignment of the tool pot. Add to that a point sensor such as that discussed and a macro and that will tell if there is a tool in place. No sensing the tool throw a program stop and wait for a continue action. Now let me mind you i have no engineering degree nore have i been at this very long so my idea may just be a pie in the sky but it started out and has slowly started to take shape. A lot of it comes from joe's plans too. I use his drawbar and i can not say enough about it. I am also using bobcadv21 and mach 3 software and an industrial hobbies mill with the tormach qcts and joe vicar's drawbar for this.

[InspirationTool]

You might also look at the kwik switch taper. There are holders available for R8 spindles, and some bridgeport spindles are kwik switch instead of R8.

I have links to the all the manual quick change systems I know about here:

http://www.jeffalbro.net/cnc/quick-change/

-Jeff

[Tormach]

There are several people that have spoken to us about developing an automatic tool changer using TTS. In most cases they are looking for some simple geometry modifications to facilitate their work, mainly a taper to the end and a slot for a tool holder clip.

In order to facilitate their development efforts we have designed a TTS-ATC special. I have tried to attach a JPG with details. This tool will be available sometime in February. If anyone gets a tool changer to the point of an effective commercial product we will support them by making these changes to the entire line of TTS. It's also relatively easy to make these changes to existing tools if you use carbide tooling.

Greg Jackson
Tormach

[NinerSevenTango]

I like that groove, Greg. With that, something reasonably stout could be designed.

Might have to perforate the column in a few spots, though!

--97T--
AKA John from Induction Svcs

[digits]

Originally Posted by Tormach There are several people that have spoken to us about developing an automatic tool changer using TTS. In most cases they are looking for some simple geometry modifications to facilitate their work, mainly a taper to the end and a slot for a tool holder clip. In order to facilitate their development efforts we have designed a TTS-ATC special. I have tried to attach a JPG with details. This tool will be available sometime in February. If anyone gets a tool changer to the point of an effective commercial product we will support them by making these changes to the entire line of TTS. It's also relatively easy to make these changes to existing tools if you use carbide tooling. Greg Jackson Tormach

Are the ATC friendly versions of the toolholders likely to be available to the public for those of us who'd like to try to build DIY tool-changers?

Looking at the diagram you posted, are the dimensions of the taper at all critical, or is it just there to allow for some misalignment between spindle and tool-holder?

[Tormach]

The tool holders are in stock. They're not on the web site, but you can call or email to order them. We only made 3/8" for the test:

PN 30587 "TTS - 3/8" Special Test holder for Automatic Tool Changer Development"

The price is $20.75, the same price as the regular holders. There is nothing special about the entrance taper. The best size and angle of that taper will probably be established by some experimentation with an ATC. I would expect different ATC designs to work a bit differently.

Greg

[digits]

Thanks for the reply - much appreciated

[Zumba]

.