cat 40/bt 40

[Cartel, LLC]

ok, so my vf-3 i was told was set up for cat 40 tooling. when the setup guy came to my shop he said that its set up for bt and thats why it wont execute a tool change properly. if you put a cat 40 toolholder in the spindle, and go to do a tool change, the fingers in the tool carousel were about .175" lower than the groove on the tool holder. so, after changing parameter 64 to set the spindle height during tool change and getting the 2 lined up properly,the carousel wont extend out far enough to do a tool change as the socket head cap screw on the carousel tool fingers hit the spindle housing.

does any on this make sense??? i called haas and gave them the serial number and they said it was built with cat 40 in 1995 when the mill was new. is it possible that someone put bt 40 in it at some point? does my setup guy not know what hes doing??? im so confused.

[Geof]

It is possible to change from Cat 40 to BT 40 just by changing the grippers on the carousel so that may have been done. See if you can find a machine that does have Cat 40 grippers to compare them with yours.

[rrbmachining]

I had the same problem with mine. The dealer told me it was BT so I brought BT tooling. When I had the machine serviced the tech told me it was set up for CAT. With a BT holder in the spindle, when we did a tool change the gripper fingers of the changer were gripping the outside of the toolholder, not in the groove. If the machine had been run the tool holder would have fallen out of the carousel. With the older type of carousel all you need to do is to alter the gripper fingers. Its the same fingers but there is a spacer washer that needs to be moved to change the position of the fingers vertically. Newer machines have to have the whole mounting plate for the carousel changed as the cut outs are machined to a different depth.

I think my VF2 was originally built as a BT machine, as when I replaced the shuttle cable assembly, under the cover plates was BT written in marker pen.

I will try to take some photos today of how the set up of the fingers should look so you can compare to your set up

[Cartel, LLC]

so, if im understanding you correctly i can remove a spacer and that will alter the height of the fingers and that will change it back to cat 40 tooling? if so, that would be great. another thing, my setup guy is telling me that you cant put cat 40 tooling in backwards meaning it only goes one direction? i know the toolholder notches are offset but is this really true? if you put my cat 40 tool holder in either direction it runs just fine. so, hes telling me thats not right.

[Geof]

It may be different on the older Haas machines, but I doubt it; you can put either Cat 40 or Bt 40 in the spindle either way. There is some difference in the notches but the keys on the machine are made to fit either notch.

[rrbmachining]

I was told to always put the bigger notch to face the tool changer so the alignment key does not hit the tool holder when the shuttle comes in. This does not normally happen however as things start to wear and go out of alignment, overtravel of the changer can become a problem. I have seen the alignment key cause slight deflection of the tool holder when the tool has been put in the wrong way round

if you send me your email address I will send you a picture of a Cat40 carousel setup

[Haas__man]

Ok,
each pocket on the carousel is made up of basically 4 items (there are also some cap screws and washers and bushes but we''ll simplify to make it easier to describe)
On each pocket there are 2 x tool fingers
1 x extractor key (the part that aligns the tool)
1 x extractor spring (that holds the tool in)

the extractor keys are the same part wether you are on cat or bt
so are the extractor springs
the tool fingers are different. Bt fingers and cat fingers have a totally different profile, which you can measure, but not easily see unless you have two different styles of tool finger next to each other.

Here is how to tell if your machine is cat or BT

Cat - the fingers are on top of the extractor key
BT - the extractor key is on top of the fingers

BT - the extractor spring is inside a cut out in the aluminium disk
Cat - the extractor spring is approx 1/4 inch above the aluminium disk

To clarify - to change from cat to BT or BT to cat, new tool fingers x 40 will be required.
Hope this helps

[har78233]

So if I understand right it doesn't matter which side the dimple goes when you load a CT tool??

[Geof]

On a Haas machine no it does not matter.

[Cartel, LLC]

got a bunch of bt tooling and it works great. thanks for the replies.