Manual tool touch.

We have 2 Brother S700X1 mills. We had a part sling out of the vice and damage the touch off setter. We are in the middle of production and cannot shut this one down. There must be an simple way to touch these tools off. Please help, any suggestions.
Dan

danguasp said:

We have 2 Brother S700X1 mills. We had a part sling out of the vice and damage the touch off setter. We are in the middle of production and cannot shut this one down. There must be an simple way to touch these tools off. Please help, any suggestions.

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Yup, easy.

I am going to give this examples in metric because I am a metric shop.

With no tool loaded, the Speedio spindle all the way down is at Z 180 (mm) in machine coordinates (bottom left part of POS screen). With the spindle all the way up you're at Z 480.

Stack up two 1-2-3 blocks on the table. I use 25-50-75 blocks so I end up with a stack that is 150 mm high. Bring the tool down and touch it off with a piece of paper. Once the paper starts to just bind when you wiggle it back and forth, record the position in machine coordinates of the spindle. Subtract the stack-up height of the blocks plus the thickness of your piece of paper and you will have the tool length. Key to "DATA BANK," "Tool data," "Tool list," and put that number in for the tool length. "Completion with saving" and you're good.

Quick picture in case it helps:

If you’re using a presetter I assume your tool lengths are from gage line.
So touch off a finished part face, note the machine position Z. Difference between that Z and corresponding work offset Z is tool offset. Should be a positive number.
As mentioned, use a pc of paper.

Be extremely cautions if you set your tools with the "Auto Set" button as it will automatically subtract any value you have set in User Parameter > Switch 1 > Number 7. This value is typically set to the height of your tool setter (table to trigger height).

If you record this number and save it somewhere, then make it zero or whatever size gage block stack you are using, it will automatically subtract that value from the machine position. So say you're using a 4.000" gage block and touching tools to the table, like you would with a tool setter, put 4.000" in that location and it will automatically subtract it for you if you press Auto Set while in the tool length offset field.

You'll need to repopulate the tool height value back in there when the tool setter is replaced, but it should be calibrated and most likely will result in a new value anyways.