Renishaw ballbar in wood industry

[TOM S]

I have seen millions of videos and ads for Renishaw (et al.) that use software, and probes for calibrating 5 axis machines.  I have only seen this exclusively in the metal working industry.  I have been in the woodworking industry for 20+ years and have never encountered it being used.  Has anyone else seen / used this tech on a CNC router?

[crazy^millman]

Same answer here

[RaiderX]

we ballbar our routers. not wood working tho, we are a composite shop. most routers are production trim mine is used mostly for tooling.

it would not have been a route i would have initiated (10k investment) and it just tells you info on servo tuning and squareness, some other data as well.

some one else pulled the trigger on ballbar purchase before i had chance to give input. now we have it so i use it.

I could simply do a circle triangle square test and or manual tram sweeps etc. to accomplish similar info. we are not splitting hairs with our router just not designed for such.

[cncappsjames]

It's overkill for wood pure and simple.

[huskermcdoogle]

20 hours ago, cncappsjames said:

It's overkill for wood pure and simple.

Depends on what you are doing,  99.99999999% of the time this statement is true.

[huskermcdoogle]

I was thinking about this a bit more and have decided to elaborate.  A ball bar can be a very handy tool for detecting mechanical problems on routers, but you have to toss aside the usual test routines sometimes to get the problems to show up in the plots.  Turning up the test feed to run at feeds that you normally cut at are important here, especially on tack drive machines.  It can be very useful for detecting bad teeth, loose motors and such that don’t move unless under stress.

Having had a ballbar for a while now I wish I had had more time/opportunity to play with it and develop more tests and procedures for evaluating machines.  Especially in regards to evaluating kinematic/geometry errors on multi axis machines.