Machine-tool Probing

[Shadow]

Hello:

Does anyone use a touch probe on your machine?

[Salahuddin]

Yes I use touch MP12 probe from Renishaw company.

its make work nice.

[Shadow]

Salah:

What do you use the probe for? Setup? In-Process adjustments?

How do you program it?

Dave

[cadcam]

If any one is thinking about probing or probing on the machine, being on machine inspection.

Please go to the new member’s home page.

I am talking about Shadow our newest Member.

I have spoken with this man many of times vary smart.

All so James knows him pretty good too.

I think every one knows me well enough by now that this is not a bum steer, if it is some thing you can use.

Hope i am makeing sense.

Thanks all for letting me give my $.002

[ 12-29-2001: Message edited by: cadcam ]

[bryan.davis]

We use renishaw MP10 touch probe and TS27R tool setting probing, programming is done by calling up a set of sub programs with parameters.

The MP10 (MP12 is similar) can be used for workpiece setting, inspection/SPC and also by programming the cycles with the appropriate tool offsets it can be used as an in process inspection device that will automatically correct the machine when work goes OOT.

The TS27R can be used for tool setup (length and diameter), in precess tool inspection and as a tool breakage sensor.

The sub programs supplied by renishaw are only a basic 'kit' of commands, I strongly reccomend that anyone who is setting up a machine with probing in a tool making environment write a suite of parameter driven setting programs that handle your comman setting scenarios.

BTW CADCAM, no your not amking any sense at all but thats nothing new

[ 12-29-2001: Message edited by: bryan.davis ]

[cadcam]

The software that Shadow has, will let you right a program using your geo and in mastercam.

[ 12-29-2001: Message edited by: cadcam ]

[ 12-29-2001: Message edited by: cadcam ]

[Shadow]

Hello:

I do not intend to use the Mastercam Forum for direct sales purposes. It is true that my company produces software for programming these things, but my interest here is to gain exposure to a wider variety of applications.

I have always assumed that most probe users bought their probes on the premise that it will produce better and faster setups. I have come to find that a great majority (over 90%) of the probes that have been sold are still in the box, on a shelf somewhere. I have also been unable to find many people that use the macros efficiently.

How many other probe users have taken the time to customize their post processors to output probing cycles for automated setup and in-process verification? Do you call the mill-bore cycle, and then verify with the probe and call the mill-bore cycle again based on probing results? This is basic functionality for the probe and I just don't see it being used anywhere in a CAM environment.

Should be a fairly simple post change, depending on how it is to be used. The mill-bore or drilling cycles, for example, would be "simple". Verifying the distance between two milled walls would require a "little" more post tweaking.

These things would be worth doing if there were enough people using them. The benefits that are realized now by writing one-off routines for long-running jobs (has to be long-running, the custom routines are very expensive to create), which is essentially lights-out operation, can also be realized for short-run jobs if it can be successfully integrated into the CAM world.

Sorry for the tirade. Just background on why I ask.

As for programming by "calling macros", are these calls added manually? Is troubleshooting a problem? Am I way off-base and these things are actually widely used and simple to understand?

Dave

[cadcam]

[ 12-29-2001: Message edited by: cadcam ]

[cadcam]

quote:

---

BTW CADCAM, no your not amking any sense at all but thats nothing new

---

Sorry sir.

[bryan.davis]

Sorry Shadow I mistook your question.

I am in no way supprised to find that 90% of probes remain in boxes, probably for similar reasons that well over 90% of machines dont have the full capabilities of their controllers fully exploited and the same reason as you will get a blank look on 90% of the faces of CNC programmers when you start talking about macro programming.

Part of the problem is down to the likes of Renishaw, who make products that are great in their functionanlity, but sadly lacking in their application.

What I mean is their software, training and knowledge of the environments these probes are used (NOT).

Take their software, you know and I know that by good application of the macros you can auomate any setup.... provided you know where on the machine the part is!!!, which quite frankly is absurd to the uninitiated, same with tool length measurewment that can measure the length of the tool provided you know the length of it!

What Ive dont is to take their macros rewrite many of them, now Ive got macros that can measure the length of any tool without any previously known length and for the setting up macros Ive set up the machine so that all the operator has to do is move the probe to an approximate start position and the machine will take that position as a temporary x,y,z zero....

none of this is complex, but in doing so Ive managed to recraft the renishaw package fron something absurd into something useable.

When it comes to setting up with probing what shops want is 'what it says on the tin' a system that automates setups and renishaw probing only really does that in the most basic of cases and only then is you have operators who are more that halfway competent as programmers

[Tony]

Too Funny...

I actually brought all the manuals home for the probe this Holiday weekend (Exciting Newyears huh)?!

You see the lonely Probe sits mounted to the Machine and Nobody Knows what to do with it!

Because the people that Do know all about it Have been Layed off!!I did find one guy up the food chain and he said it would take an hour on the phone to run through it....BUT my employer says For the thousands we spent...they promised someone here to run us through it!

So were not paying the bill And the Warranty will not start until We are trained.....

I know its not rocket science, and I really need it for this next job (one top,"cav" three bottoms "Cores")

Soooo I will figure it out on my own.

With my Famous qoute I give apprentices

"We'll get it done if it takes all the time and money they have"

[Shadow]

Well Bryan, it sounds like you have a pretty good handle on the macros. I am still wondering though, do you access the macros through Mastercam? Is the macro executed for each part or do you only use the setup function once, at the beginning of a job?

Tony, good luck with your new capabilities. You might want to talk to Bryan some more about it.

[bryan.davis]

Actually No Ive not bothered to set up mastercam to use the probing, its a big job for me to do and Ive not got the time, the only exception to this is the tool length probe where Ive set up options to do pre measurement and breakage sensing.

The approach I took was to write macros that handle the common cases so that the operators can use the probing to facilitate their setting operations.

As an inspection device we use it rarely since we are a toolmaking establishment and unless the inspection falls outside our range of inspection equipment its often quicker to use a micrometer than to write a inspection routine. If we were a batch manufacturer then I would probabaly seriously look at using the probe for SPC.

Meanwhile Im witing a set of routines that will enable the probe to be used in a reverse engineering situation, something that the probe isnt really supposed to be used for, but again by application its something it can be pressed into.

[Shadow]

Bryan:

This is as good a place as any to look at the probing functionality with regard to the post processors in Mastercam. Starting with a simple drill cycle. This cycle could be looking for one of two things (just to start with). The routine could look to see if the hole is there (tool break detection) and stop the machine, or if the tool is a size controlling tool, such as a burnishing roller, if the hole is big enough and re-run the tool a pre-determined number of times. The desired function could be switched on and off and otherwise controlled with miscellaneous variables.

Would something like this interest you, Bryan, or anyone else out there? If enough people are interested, we could get quite a detailed and flexible routine worked out here.

Also, its funny that you mentioned reverse-engineering. Although I have many years of experience at RE (enough to stay away from it), including the original Big Bertha and the original Starship Voyager, I attempt to work exclusively with inspection. However, there are people that use inspection software for RE. One person puts blank paper on the part, scrubs with a pencil, scans right into Mastercam, and programs an inspection routine for the desired features. After the inspection routine is completed, the original scanned geometry can be discarded, leaving the actual results! Pretty cool, huh? Wish I had thought of it.

Dave

[Guest CNC Apps Guy 1]

Hello Dave. Nice to see you've joined the club.

As a former AE for a machine tool company, I would agree that 90% of the probes are still sitting in the boxes. A few companies I went to to do Training for probing I showed them how to set them up, locate fixtures, and the liek, they said "Thank You Very Much now put that back in the box".

What a shame. Such a wonderful tool will never see the light of day.

[Reece L Gibson]

In the three day post class we offer, That is one of the projects I cover and let the students modify the post for macro calls through Mastercam.

Some of the Clients we train already have Macro's

running and like to use them, to me I just answer the questions to the best of my knowledge and try to get the software to do what they want it to.

In the CNC II course we spend 4 weeks on Macro's

Fanuc,Fadal,and Okuma.

[mikee]

Has anyone done macro programming for the a2100 control ? Our machine is probe ready but I need to do macros for other things, like serialize numbers, special engraving.

mikee

[bryan.davis]

RE using a probe to drill a hole.

As a starting point I understand this, but practically no, to me there is no value in using a probe to check a DRILLED hole, especially if the probe cycle is generated in the same MasterCAM operation as the drilled hole...why.

1. if I drill a hole Im not that bothered by the accuracy of it, knowing that the drill was good at the start of the cyle and hadnt brokenduring the cycle is good enough to tell me the hole is there.

2. if the drilling cycle was wrong so that the hole wasnt there then its pretty sure that the probing cycle would be wrong and wouldnt be able to distiguish that the drilling operation was wrong in the first place.

3. If I cared that much about the accuracy of the hole then I would not be just drlling it!

4. If I cared about the cycle time so much that I the accuracy IS critical and I was only going to drill it then I dont think anybody would persuade me to probe it!

OK, so much for drilled holes, try this: -

holes interpolated with an endmill-

In a SINGLE cycle I want a MasterCAM intergrated routine that will cut a circular bore probe it, alter the tool offset and then recut it.

[bryan.davis]

MIKEE

yup Ive done quite a bit of A2100 macro programing, its a very nice macro language thats extreamly veratile.

I guess by serialised numbers you want something that can give each individual part its own unique number... this is something very easy for the A2100 email me and Ill see what I can help you out with.