Mori Seiki SL-1A Lathe tool help

tapped said:

Hello everyone, I finally joined up because this forum has been a good source for help and I need help with one issue. A little info about me, I worked at a shop for about 8 years running all Mazak (mills, lathes, integrex) and Omax waterjet, but my boss is who dealt with the programming side (CAM/CAM). Fast forward about 10 years later I am running my own business, mainly late model performance shop and purchased a chassis dyno, thousands in tuning software and so on. So, I decided last year to start making some of my own products because well, my ideas, products that didn't exist and such. I came across some machines and one of them I had purchased was a Mori SL-1A, it seems like this lathe is loved by many, I believe it's a 1983, Fanuc 6T control and does have the yellow servo caps and AC Spindle. I do have all the books, operators manual and I have repaired some things on it, got slide oil system cleaned out and working again. I got a bunch of tool holders and between this lathe with 6" chuck, and the Mori AL-2BTM I bought with 8" chuck, I got hundreds of jaws and goodies for about $2500. Figured I couldn't go wrong. Well, again, up until about a year ago, I have never really looked at or dealt with G code, I have never used any CAD/CAM software, but, bought Fusion 360 and actually have an old Cincinnati sabre 750 mill cranking out parts! But this SL-1A has me baffled. Tool measuring/Offsets...now I know I am a G code newb, but I have set say T0100 (no offset) at my G50 point, spindle center and Z face, use G28 to return to U0 and W0 for safe turret changes, but say the next tool I am using of course is way off from the G50 position, so I entered difference into offset table so during program of course call T0505 to get that offset and make everything line up. But it's like the machine wants to apply offset in the U0 W0 right after tool change and of course hits a soft limit, usually X, the I have to reset everything including G50 after re-home or zero return. I even tried a G50 command in the program itself but then it seems to affect entire program even if the command is 2 tool changes away. I read in the manual and it seems the offsets are for very small changes and they mention a G10 code for tool in program but go into very little detail and show no examples. It seems the manual is great for someone that already knows G code inside and out...not so much me. The old mill I bought I was able to get all the tools set and have no issues with it but it uses a G92 for work coordinates and well, what I learned on that doesn't exactly transfer to a Mori lathe. I have little time to really mess with this and I have spent hours with it, not sure what I am missing but I will be more than happy to pay someone that does, even coming to my shop in the Northern DFW area. Thanks guys

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Dan from Oakland said:

Look this thread over- lots of good postion preset info here regarding how it all works.

Fanuc 6T G50

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Dan from Oakland said:

Good rule of thumb is to ALWAYS return your tool to the same position the machine was in when you picked up the G50 or G92. Example if your G50 was X2.00Z5.00, the last move for that tool should be G00X2.00Z5.00. That makes is much easier to check your program. But then I never run my tool changes at the home position to save travel time. I put an absolute move from machine home to the common tool change position into the 1st lines of the program along with a block delete. I home the machine and then turn on the block delete after the 1st part. That way if I interrupt the program, I can simply cancel tool offsets, home the machine and start over without worrying about the machine being out of position. You can certainly make the G50 or G92 be the distance from the machine home position to the part zero, and the SL1 is a small machine so you won't waste a lot of time moving to machine home each time but. . . . There are certainly other ways to postion your tools, but that is what I've done on machines that don't have geometry offsets for tools. Don't guess! you need to understand how this works or you will crash. Forgot to mention that your g50 preset values should be from the current tool nose position to your part zero. Good luck!

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tapped said:

Thanks Dan, I checked this out and I went probably 4 threads deep but I have an idea what I need to do with this to simply not hit overtravel after a tool change.

I think from what I have read I can still use G50, in the beginning setup, use offset data for tool measurements as I can put really large numbers in there and just cancel the offset. I will fire up the machine and do some test runs. Before I made post I figured my worse case scenario was writing every program with the offset built into G28 commands for each tool. As an example:

T0101 (G50 Zero setup tool)
~
~
~
G28 U0.75 W-0.5 (knowing this is next tool offset)
T0202 (which is 0.75 different in X(U) and -0.5 different in Z(W))

It would suck to have write each program and have to go back and double check each and every tool offset but it's not the end of the world either. just using this for small products, all hand written programs anyway because I have no clue how to upload a CAM, if it's even possible with this machine.

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