Brandon Dixon
Aluminum
- Joined
- Feb 22, 2007
- Location
- Tuscaloosa, AL
I'm "storing" a CNC lathe for a friend for a few months, and just to make sure that it stays in top shape, I'm going to make sure that it still works from time to time .
Anyway, the work that I'll be doing with it will be essentially prototyping. I rarely need more than 10 of any given part.
The lathe has an 8 position turret and the possibility of some gang tooling, but it still seems to me that I'll be changing out tools fairly often. I've been trying to decide the best way to set up the tool and work offsets.
In the mill I have a "master tool" (a 3D indicator) and all of the lengths are relative to that tool. That seems to work best for me there. I just zero with the indicator and all of the other tools in the changer are ready to go.
The lathe seems like a different situation. Having a master tool doesn't seem like as good an idea here. It seems like I should make all of the tool lenght offsets relative to the chuck? I could always program relative to the chuck as well. My G54 offset would almost always be zero for Z with that method, I suppose.
For the X axis offsets, should I always determine an offset for the tool relative to the centerline of the chuck? This seems time consuming, but maybe I could get to be fast at it. I've also thought about using G54 to get me to the centerline of the chuck. That way straight tools in the turret could be setup with a zero X offset.
Other than acquiring a tool probe for the lathe, what can I do to make changing tools and setting offsets go as quickly and acurately as possible?
Thanks!
Brandon Dixon
Anyway, the work that I'll be doing with it will be essentially prototyping. I rarely need more than 10 of any given part.
The lathe has an 8 position turret and the possibility of some gang tooling, but it still seems to me that I'll be changing out tools fairly often. I've been trying to decide the best way to set up the tool and work offsets.
In the mill I have a "master tool" (a 3D indicator) and all of the lengths are relative to that tool. That seems to work best for me there. I just zero with the indicator and all of the other tools in the changer are ready to go.
The lathe seems like a different situation. Having a master tool doesn't seem like as good an idea here. It seems like I should make all of the tool lenght offsets relative to the chuck? I could always program relative to the chuck as well. My G54 offset would almost always be zero for Z with that method, I suppose.
For the X axis offsets, should I always determine an offset for the tool relative to the centerline of the chuck? This seems time consuming, but maybe I could get to be fast at it. I've also thought about using G54 to get me to the centerline of the chuck. That way straight tools in the turret could be setup with a zero X offset.
Other than acquiring a tool probe for the lathe, what can I do to make changing tools and setting offsets go as quickly and acurately as possible?
Thanks!
Brandon Dixon