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Tool Numbering

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Aluminum
Joined
Oct 12, 2013
Location
San Francisco, CA
Our VMC with a Mitsubishi Meldas M64s control has a tool changer with 24 pockets. We have slightly more tools than that, but that's plenty because I want to change some tools manually anyway.

Yesterday I decided to implement a new tool numbering system, and the range is 2-200 (the control allows 200 tools). I won't use 200 tools, but I have them all classified by carbide/hss, solid/insert, metric/imperial, spiral point/spiral flute, etc... you get the idea.

Am I going about this all wrong? How do you number your tools?

I'm doing this because I decided to transition to Solidworks CAM, which is included with Solidworks, from Autodesk HSMWorks, which my student license for was still activated for some reason. I tried HSMXpress, but it doesn't even have chamfering built in. In the meantime I export solids to Fusion 360 just for CAM.
 
Tool 1 facemill
Tool 2 indexable shouldermill
Tool 3 primary roughing endmill ie 1/2 or 3/8
Tool 4 chamfermill/spotdrill
Tool 5 primary finishing tool
Tool 6+ will be loaded as needed not picked off a cart
 
I don't know, I used to run a Doosan with the capability for 400 tools and I loved it. I set up a spread sheet with 400 tools and filled it out with drills, reamers, taps, endmills, facemills, thread mills, specials, etc. I left room in certain areas to grow as needed.

I loved it, absolutely loved it.

Pull a tool out, put it in the rack, it could be tool 232. Pop it back in the spindle a month later and the machine knows exactly what tool 232 is.

Tool 1 was always the spindle probe, and was set so the spindle could not turn on.

The additional benefit to this was setting up solid works for speeds and feeds. I took all the tooling and set up different sheets for the different materials we used. Then I used formulas to setup up generic "safe" speeds and feeds for all the tools for a given material. All of that was loaded into solid works for the different material libraries.

I have 99 tool offsets in my old mill, but can only use 20 of them. :nutter: not sure how it was SUPPOSED to work, but I would love to have 99.
 
Ok, maybe if you have several hundred tool slots you can keep each one unique. He's talking about up to 200. I dunno, maybe if OP's work is simple and he can guarantee he'll never need that 201st tool definition he'll be ok.
 
Our VMC with a Mitsubishi Meldas M64s control has a tool changer with 24 pockets. We have slightly more tools than that, but that's plenty because I want to change some tools manually anyway.

Yesterday I decided to implement a new tool numbering system, and the range is 2-200 (the control allows 200 tools). I won't use 200 tools, but I have them all classified by carbide/hss, solid/insert, metric/imperial, spiral point/spiral flute, etc... you get the idea.

Am I going about this all wrong? How do you number your tools?

For our more complicated programs, those machines typically use 20-30 tools in one program but about half those tools are standard for every program and are kept as such; the remaining tools are always changing. Tool numbers jump around a bit.

For our simple programs, which are typically cutting soft material and use 3-7 tools, only the first tool is standard and the rest are always changing. By the way these simple programs always use tool numbers counting up from 1 and never jump around. On these machines I wish I had a 100 pots, or more, because every tool we use runs the gamut of length:diameter variations and almost 100% of these tools are long life so they would not get changed out very often. That would be my dream scenario and we would save so much time and money with standardized tools!

For the larger horizontals with a lot of pots and offsets, about 90% of the tools are standard and never change. Lots of time and money saved on these machines! : )

The potential for time/trouble savings is high but in the beginning there can be mistakes from operators changing from the "well, that's the way we've always done it" mentality to switching to a more logical system so be careful.

Where you can really save a lot of setup time is on your inserted mills and drills which don't really change with fresh inserts. Of course it's a good idea to probe all your finishing tools but for drills and cutters which aren't doing anything critical it's not necessary in many cases to be probed every time. Some people get worried about chipped inserts but that is up to you and your typical work. Some inserts chip in typical applications because they are cutting god awful shit while other applications this is considered "catastrophic insert failure" because the material is forgiving and cutting performance is more predictable.
 
You will continually be adding tools to your library, and eventually you'll have several hundred different tools to choose from, and several holder choices for each one. Trying to use T# to mean something other than a sequential list will only come back to bite you.

T# can define the tool. Holder setup/stickout can be defined through other methods.

This is one of my biggest gripes with machine builders and ultimately cnc programmers/operators. First up, machine builders. With today's modern computers and memory, why the fuck are we limited to 200 tool offsets? Sure, some will allow up tp 400, if you're lucky 5 or 600. Anything more and you have to do some fancy macros to manage. 1000 offsets should be bare minimum....then we can get the rest of you using tool offsets the way they should be...and that is a dedicated # for a tool.

Imagine being able to go to any machine in the shop and knowing what tool #364 is. (well, obviously not from memory but you get the idea). Imagine if tool numbering made logical sense, ie 10-110 were drills, 200-240 were endmills etc.

With this offseting strategy you can now easily transfer offsets between machines, easily sort cam programs by tool number to ensure the tap drill comes before the tap etc, etc, etc.

This thinking of new tool numbers for every program, every machine...ludicrous I tell ya!:nutter:
 
There are ways and methods of doing this successfully. It starts at the software side, not the shop floor. Start creating a very Articulate and Specific Etool library. Once the Library is complete :) then start using it as you Program new parts. Once the Software side is going perfectly :) then implement it into the shop.

R
 
T# can define the tool. Holder setup/stickout can be defined through other methods.

This is one of my biggest gripes with machine builders and ultimately cnc programmers/operators. First up, machine builders. With today's modern computers and memory, why the fuck are we limited to 200 tool offsets? Sure, some will allow up tp 400, if you're lucky 5 or 600. Anything more and you have to do some fancy macros to manage. 1000 offsets should be bare minimum....then we can get the rest of you using tool offsets the way they should be...and that is a dedicated # for a tool.

Imagine being able to go to any machine in the shop and knowing what tool #364 is. (well, obviously not from memory but you get the idea). Imagine if tool numbering made logical sense, ie 10-110 were drills, 200-240 were endmills etc.

With this offseting strategy you can now easily transfer offsets between machines, easily sort cam programs by tool number to ensure the tap drill comes before the tap etc, etc, etc.

This thinking of new tool numbers for every program, every machine...ludicrous I tell ya!:nutter:

Kind of like a Siemens control T="12mm_3Flute_Al"

Use descriptive names to actually name the tool you can look at and know what it is.

Problem is the CAM systems I have tried (can afford) so far still want a tool number.
 
You will continually be adding tools to your library, and eventually you'll have several hundred different tools to choose from, and several holder choices for each one. Trying to use T# to mean something other than a sequential list will only come back to bite you.

I've been doing incremental numbering for years and it works for us.

The argument against it is that it's arbitrary rather than intuitive, but because we use the same numbers across multiple machines, we end up memorizing the common tool numbers without any conscious effort. It always helps that incremental numbering is naturally chronological, which can aid with remember what's what.
 
T# can define the tool. Holder setup/stickout can be defined through other methods.

This is one of my biggest gripes with machine builders and ultimately cnc programmers/operators. First up, machine builders. With today's modern computers and memory, why the fuck are we limited to 200 tool offsets? Sure, some will allow up tp 400, if you're lucky 5 or 600. Anything more and you have to do some fancy macros to manage. 1000 offsets should be bare minimum....then we can get the rest of you using tool offsets the way they should be...and that is a dedicated # for a tool.

Imagine being able to go to any machine in the shop and knowing what tool #364 is. (well, obviously not from memory but you get the idea). Imagine if tool numbering made logical sense, ie 10-110 were drills, 200-240 were endmills etc.

With this offseting strategy you can now easily transfer offsets between machines, easily sort cam programs by tool number to ensure the tap drill comes before the tap etc, etc, etc.

This thinking of new tool numbers for every program, every machine...ludicrous I tell ya!:nutter:

I don't know if they paid through the nose, or how they were set up, wish I had paid better attention. Shop I used to work at, if I put a tool in pot 12 and called it a 1580, the machine knew it was a 1/8" .020"CR hardmill. This was true whether it was the Hermle 5 Axis I ran, the Deckel 5 Axis, any of the Mazaks, and I believe the Mori (never ran it).

I agree though... to me, for what little memory it would use, to expand the machine to 400 or 4000 tools would be fairly simple. There are probably issues in my ignorance that I am over looking... but that is why they employ really smart people and pay them well.
 
I knew that it is working this way but not like that, minus one question from my list. But what do you think is there any change that those numbers are staying there because it is our destiny, or it is just a concidence? I mean I found a source that is telling about that, and now I am thinking what if that is true and the numbers that are here Angel Number 111 Meaning - Should I Be Happy or Scared? | SunSigns.Org are having a influence in our life. I mean it is not really possible, but if it is true, than it means that all these numbers make our path in life?
 
I knew that it is working this way but not like that, minus one question from my list. But what do you think is there any chance that those numbers are staying there because it is our destiny, or it is just a concidence? I mean I found a source that is telling about that, and now I am thinking what if that is true and the numbers that are here Angel Number 111 Meaning - Should I Be Happy or Scared? | SunSigns.Org are having a influence in our life. I mean it is not really possible, but if it is true, than it means that all these numbers make our path in life?
 
With today's modern computers and memory, why the fuck are we limited to 200 tool offsets? Sure, some will allow up tp 400, if you're lucky 5 or 600.

I suspect this is a training issue. Almost every major builder has been offering a supplemental tool management system on the controller for over a decade. It's the only logical way to manage a 1000+ tool library. A lot of folks have no idea that this function is on their machine.

Depending on machine, my tool calls are always something to the effect of "M6 T500 G43 HA". The H value never changes, it just pulls from the database. Calling an offset from the offset page is OLD SCHOOL.
 
I suspect this is a training issue. Almost every major builder has been offering a supplemental tool management system on the controller for over a decade. It's the only logical way to manage a 1000+ tool library. A lot of folks have no idea that this function is on their machine.

Depending on machine, my tool calls are always something to the effect of "M6 T500 G43 HA". The H value never changes, it just pulls from the database. Calling an offset from the offset page is OLD SCHOOL.

Haas has tool management software to allow more than 200 offsets?
 
I am not a HAAS user.

I would assume that their Advanced Tool Management can do this. That's pretty embarrassing if it can't. How could you run a Horizontal with only 200 offsets?

You assume wrong. Their tool management only controls the existing 200 offsets, it does not add extras. The horz they make max out at 50 tools, so maybe they don't think you'd ever need more than 50 offsets...so 200 is plenty?

The same is true for the base Fanuc controls. Unless someone knows something I don't, the Oi-Md controls max out at 400 offsets. I think they ship with less and you have to beg to get the 400 enabled.

The main point being this should not be the case and fixing should not be expensive. However, for most controls its not even an option.
 
You assume wrong. Their tool management only controls the existing 200 offsets, it does not add extras. The horz they make max out at 50 tools, so maybe they don't think you'd ever need more than 50 offsets...so 200 is plenty?

The same is true for the base Fanuc controls. Unless someone knows something I don't, the Oi-Md controls max out at 400 offsets. I think they ship with less and you have to beg to get the 400 enabled.

The main point being this should not be the case and fixing should not be expensive. However, for most controls its not even an option.

The older EC400pp had 70 tools I think.

I like what rob said, get it done in the software side (and people too!), then move it onto machines. Nothing worse than having a new system that one person, or one machine doesn't work with to ruin your workflow.
 








 
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