Basic Tooling Setup

[Harold_V]

Marty:

How the tools are held has little to do with setting offsets, which are done electronically in the control.

If you are thinking of doing it any other way, perhaps we need to chat a bit....

I believe Marty's point is that if you hold tools in a collet and don't have interchangeable collet holders, such as the BT 40 type I use on the Haas, you'd have to constantly redo the tool offset because you'd be changing the tool in the collet. That makes sense to me, because I am just now learning the ways of CNC and didn't understand, at first, that owning multiple collet adapters is commonplace. I now have 11 of the ER 32 type to compliment my Haas.

Harold

[Russ Hanscom]

Correct, you cannot have too many tool holders. Once the tool is installed and offset is known, you do not want to have to redo the process in order to switch tools in the middle of a job.

[Marty_Escarcega]

Marty:

How the tools are held has little to do with setting offsets, which are done electronically in the control.

If you are thinking of doing it any other way, perhaps we need to chat a bit....

I believe Marty's point is that if you hold tools in a collet and don't have interchangeable collet holders, such as the BT 40 type I use on the Haas, you'd have to constantly redo the tool offset because you'd be changing the tool in the collet. That makes sense to me, because I am just now learning the ways of CNC and didn't understand, at first, that owning multiple collet adapters is commonplace. I now have 11 of the ER 32 type to compliment my Haas.

Harold

Thanks Harold, nail hit on the head. Each holder is identified as well. Tool 1, 2, 3 etc. I am going to start out small, with a handful of holders to see which method I like best. Since my spindle is R8, I am getting a couple of R8-ER32 holders, and I am going to also try getting some 3/4" straight shank ER32 holders, cutting the shankes down to about 2", then using a good 3/4" collet in the spindle to hold the shank and put the tool right up against the spindle nose. Similar to the Tormach Tooling System. The caveat, is that I have a power drawbar on the machine. So, the latter set up, I would have to use a bit of care not to eject the collet all the time.

Marty

[Marty_Escarcega]

Ok, making progress. I finally got the head trammed in, vise is indicated in. (Note the fixed jaw on my Kurt is on the operator side with the handle) I modified a 3/4" collet to go just into the spindle nose, and modified my ER32 collet chucks with 3/4" shank. You can check out my Web album with pictures, but here are a couple of the modified ER32 Collet Chucks and one in the spindle. The tool is pulled up tight against the spindle nose for Z repeatability.