Probing and Touch Plates in MSM Turn?

[ethos]

What would be required to enable the use of Probing and Touch-off Tool Setting in MSM Turn, please?

It would be very convenient to be able to use an automated probe as master tool for WCO setting and similarly handy to be able to set tool offsets using a Tool Setter.

Hole centring would also be useful for aligning drill tools held in boring bar holders or gang tooling slots.

Terry

[DaveCVI]

Hi Terry,

Jul 29, 2012 13:56:53 GMT -8 ethos said:

What would be required to enable the use of Probing and Touch-off Tool Setting in MSM Turn, please?

It would be very convenient to be able to use an automated probe as master tool for WCO setting and similarly handy to be able to set tool offsets using a Tool Setter.

Hole centring would also be useful for aligning drill tools held in boring bar holders or gang tooling slots.

Terry

The short answer is "a significant amount of design and implementation effort".

These general abilities are on the wish list, but they are not really high on the project list at the moment. It's the same old problem of there being so few mach lathe users. It's rather doubtful that there would be enough of an increase in MSM lathe sales to pay back the time required. That leaves it in the category that lathe support itself was in for a long time... either a) it gots done becuause I personally need the ability, or b) it falls out as a side effect of another effort, or c) someone steps for a customs consulting project to get it done.

Mill-turn fit case a) and the MSM lathe screens were case b) (they fell out of the mill-turn work).

If you look at the mill-turn operation, you'll see that I got basic probing working in mach's lathe mode - so I have soem of the foundation work necessary - but it was not easy. In fact, after I had it working I was told by artsoft "I didn't think that would work at all".

Dave