Nerdlinger
Stainless
- Joined
- Aug 10, 2013
- Location
- Chicago, IL
Hi Everybody!
I was flipping through Smid's CNC Programming Handbook because I enjoy going "back to the basics" from time to time and he really preaches the use of Z0 in work offsets and then compensating entirely via the tool length offset:
...The Z0 offset entry is very important in the machine control. Specified Z0 means that the coordinate setting for the Z amount does not change from one part to another...The only time there is a need to consider Z-axis within the work offset setting is in those cases where the height of each part in the setup is different...
I can dig it...and that is what we do on machines that don't have probes (leave Z0, touch the tools off to the top of the part, tool offset measure, Bob's your uncle! (so our tool length offsets end up being like -15.123.) But on machines with probes I enjoy setting the Z0 offset to a number that represents the distance from the gage line to the top of the work (on our Haas's) or the distance from the table top to the top of the work (on our Brother's) and then having the tool length offset represent that actual length of the tool!
I imagine this is just one of those, "more than one way to skin a cat" scenarios but I am inquisitive by nature and tend to suffer from tunnel vision so I wanted to ask if there IS a generally-accepted way of setting top of stock and tool length out there or if it is more of a, "one guy tells you thing and one guy tells you another" deal.
Thank you!
I was flipping through Smid's CNC Programming Handbook because I enjoy going "back to the basics" from time to time and he really preaches the use of Z0 in work offsets and then compensating entirely via the tool length offset:
...The Z0 offset entry is very important in the machine control. Specified Z0 means that the coordinate setting for the Z amount does not change from one part to another...The only time there is a need to consider Z-axis within the work offset setting is in those cases where the height of each part in the setup is different...
I can dig it...and that is what we do on machines that don't have probes (leave Z0, touch the tools off to the top of the part, tool offset measure, Bob's your uncle! (so our tool length offsets end up being like -15.123.) But on machines with probes I enjoy setting the Z0 offset to a number that represents the distance from the gage line to the top of the work (on our Haas's) or the distance from the table top to the top of the work (on our Brother's) and then having the tool length offset represent that actual length of the tool!
I imagine this is just one of those, "more than one way to skin a cat" scenarios but I am inquisitive by nature and tend to suffer from tunnel vision so I wanted to ask if there IS a generally-accepted way of setting top of stock and tool length out there or if it is more of a, "one guy tells you thing and one guy tells you another" deal.
Thank you!