PathPilot on a BP VMC ATC with articulating arm.
Hi Guys I am finishing up the control for a Bridgeport VMC that uses an articulated tool arm. In use it folds up and moves back out of the way. The reason being that this machine does the finish work on a custom cast 4 valve per cylinder Double overhead CAM head for the old Datsun 240Z. It turns the old smal inline 6 into a beast (;-). The head design and molds are produced by the shop here and they also do the finish machine work on the heads and make ALL the head accessories such as cam towers, cams and cam drive train, valve covers, intakes etc,etc.
The reason for the articulated arm is the heads mounted on the 4th axis mount take up the majority of the available room on the table leaving really no room for a carousel umbrella type ATC. THUS the 1 arm bandit was born.
PP is running the ATC easily from inside the controller with ZERO outside help such as USB cards etc. The atc operational code is ALL ngc(Gcode) code. The ATC itself uses 2 axis which are run in PP as AUX axis B and C. The controller uses the Mesa 7i80 control card as it supports 4 full ports of I/O the ATC itself uses 9 in and 9 outs + 2 axis supports S/D.
The carousel refhomes on startup and the B axis engages the spindle and refhomes on the fly. It is a special Spindle orientating axis. It also does spindle orientation for precision probing where the spindle rotates during probing to keep the probe trip point inline with the direction of travel. This provide extreme accuracy with trilobal probes and eliminated the trilobal errors when probing in multiple axis and directions.
Part of the ATC coding also provide individual park positions depending on what part of the head it is working on. Other features are a hotkey to display the tool info on the fly so you can always see what the tool is in use. Press the F2 button and up pops the tool data info in teh toolpath display. Release the F2 and teh message line goes away. F12 toggles the Inc/Cont jog mode and there is a feature that when you select fast jog (shift jog ) it automatically shifts into Cont mode. That saves hunting down teh mouse to switch modes before jogging.
There are also a bunch more features but I am out of room and time. F5 F7 F8 ALSO ctrl_F1 ...F12 rotates the carousel to the Associated Tool slot for loading. Hotkeys to actuate each joint of teh ATC arm in case you need to clear a jamb, WHICH I have not seen YET but just in case they are covered. ALSO there is a rotating yellow beacon to let YOU know that PP needs you help on a tool change for TOOLS not in the carousell. or out of slot tools Of course there is auto tool length setup , switching pages from a hotkey accessing the DRO from a hotkey Mainly to go MOUSELESS, yadda yadda yadda.
Video to follow when they get time . Maybe Monday (;-)
IF there are any features that you would like to see for ATC support please speak up. You never know what may become of your ideas.IF not Tormach who knows what may pop up.
Ya never know, (;-) TP
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Re: PathPilot on a BP VMC ATC with articulating arm.
Here is a link to a short video of the BP VMC ATC changing tools.
https://vimeo.com/686386743?utm_sour...campaign=28749
It started out as a prototype design BUT it ended up running for YEARS. It has changed MANY tools (;-) It is feed by a 12 tool carousel that could be any size OR a tool chain 100 tools ???
(;-) TP
Re: PathPilot on a BP VMC ATC with articulating arm.
That is Awesome!
A lot of monkey motion going on there
Jim Dawson
Sandy, Oregon, USA
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