This might be kind of an odd one. I recently moved to a new city, and the local makerspace has a PCNC440 (yay!), but it’s an aggressively bare-bones setup*: No TTS, no toolsetting, no height gauge, no probing system, no power drawbar. Even after just the checkout I can tell it’s on the wrong side of the frustration line, especially coming from PS1 in Chicago that has their setup really well dialed in.
It’s a for-profit makerspace (no member involvement/donations), so I’m looking at bringing a “Suitcase Kit” to patch some of the gaps. I’d say the the budget is ~1500, and the key gaps I’m looking to patch are:
Probing: I’ve used a haimer, but am intrigued by some kind of passive probe for the height. Not sure how much of a hassle it would be to setup in Pathpilot each time though.
Tool-Setting: I’ve always used the TTS height-guage, but I’m wondering about either an electronic tool setter, or one of the ones that sits on the part. They don’t have a height gauge, but they do have a plate so I could turn a tool-setting jig to use on it.
Drawbar: Kind of stuck on this one, was thinking maybe a torque driver? Could just offer to install one, but even the 440 kit is pretty steep as a contribution to a for-profit operation.
Any thoughts or experiences would be most welcome! I’d also be curious about what everyone’s minimal set of TTS tooling looks like, I’ve got 6 ER20 tool holders, and am thinking maybe it’s a few jacob’s chucks, and I turn some endmill holders for the tools I use most often.
TLDR: I’m going to be carrying a toolsetting and probing solution to and from a makerspace in a suitcase, what options should I be looking at?
Search through my posts and replies and you will find a LOT of pertinent info on these two topics. I try to keep the info more general where it adapts to any machine but I’m on a 440 (but have been fortunate to get some time on larger Tormach mills for stuff that doesn’t fit my envelope). I try to link and reference back and forth each time similar questions come up.
This topic is very similar and just came up:
I have the ATC and PDB and I can’t really function without either of them, so…yeah, I guess take an impact driver if you don’t have that and try to get the space to spend money on the PDB if they have a budget/plans for improvement. If you are doing hours of machining per session, assuming you have compressed air and are allowed to install it, I would go as far as buying that and taking it back and forth. It could always go on eBay at any point. The couple of $$$ you lose you would recoup in productivity. Failing that, yeah, impact driver with torque limiting sticks or equivalent.
I started with the basic TTS kit. I seem to order more TTS holders in groups of 10 and am only swapping tools that are infrequent use even with an ETS, BUT I’ve got a place for all of them and am not having to cart things back and forth to makerspace. I don’t drill much because of the torque limits and prefer to bore and interpolate to my specified critical diameters. Usually I’m only drilling for 2.5mm hole or something stupid small that doesn’t really make sense for a tiny endmill.
A stock 440 (since I would imagine you won’t be allowed to fiddle inside the CNC electronics like an owner can) only works with the passive probe and simple NC ETS. I think the 24R ETS may work from prior mention but you need to verify that. A basic Asia source ETS will work fine on a properly terminated DIN plug. You want to get an NC type and you can leave it on the table and set your G37 during your session AND connect the probe in series. Very important that you don’t have a situation of plugging and unplugging. You will mix them up and then it will be tears and $$$. @brian_satterlee is a bit more experienced than I am and pointed out in one of these threads that it’s going to be more accurate and consistent than the height gauge: it’s dialed into the machine’s coordinate system against the nose of the spindle. I can see where the height gauge can be “off” as I have the Tormach one and the USB cable. It is now part of my metrology kit and not used for tool setting. ETS only for me. I’ve graduated to a clone Renishaw tool setter. That is definitely not portable and takes more time to setup than the less expensive one.
$70-80 gets you the super budget probe meant for smaller machines. I’ve shown it dialed in concentricity to 0.0005”. It’s usable but IMHO fragile for this size of machine, more suited for the xsTechs. The Tormach passive probe is pretty sturdy. Dialing in and testing will be a couple minutes for any probe. Well worth it, IMHO.
For probing there are lots of options out there but the Passive probe fits within your budget. Some of the cheaper options out there require PP changes that will get wiped when PP is updated and since you don’t have complete domain over the machine, this could get frustrating. Note that if you setup the probe correctly in PP then you will not have to reset it every time unless someone messes with the machine.
For tool setting on a budget, I prefer this method over the height gauge but now that I have an ETS I am never looking back. The 24R ETS works on the 440 and is reasonably priced.
If you want to swap back to TTS on that machine then you should just need the TTS collet for the spindle. That is, unless they modified the draw bar for R8 tooling.