This video is for users of CNC milling machines and shows how measurements can be built up into a sequence and added into your cutting program.
Mike is going to take us through this on a Fanuc control on which we've got a tablet PC connected.
Mike, I’ve got my cutting program, tell me a bit about how I can add some measurements into that.
OK, so to do that you also want to have an automated program.
I know that with this we can measure single features in a more manual style,
but actually if you want to do that full program, we would use our Program builder.
The Program builder will allow you to build up a sequence of programs that you could then run automatically.
OK, so something that traditionally would have been quite a complex matter, needing to read the manual.
That's right, programming a lot of the G-code longhand, obviously this takes all of that pain away.
Initially what we'll do, is we have to set up some information,
so we'd give it an NC program number so that can be called by your cutting program.
Also, things like identifying which work coordinate system will be active that we're going to be probing in,
and also something else here where the customer can define their retract position.
So again, in the whole ethos of wanting to make this simple, when you add a feature to the program,
it will automatically move to this retract height and then move to each of these features at that same height
That can be optimised for more advanced users, but just straight out the gate is the simplest way to work.
So that now gives us our sequence where we can add things to our program.
Yes, I see you've got a probe path visualised there on the screen.
Yes, that's right. We have this tool path viewer here where we can see a very simplistic view of the probe path,
on the left-hand side, his is our sequence, this is where we can add in new features.
What I'll do is, we've got a feature in there, I'm just going to add a second one in.
And what you'll notice is, we have a very similar set of menus here for the different cycles.
All very graphical. That's right. I've just chosen the bore cycle.
In this case we do need to populate a little bit more information for the bore.
Because we're going to move to the same position of the bore every time this program is run, we just need to give it its nominal values.
I'm just going to punch those in there.
These are values that will be known from the drawing, there's nothing really that people aren't going to know here for that particular component.
Once I've added that feature.
Great, the paths been updated now.
That's right, we can see the additional feature now in our sequence and obviously our viewer here is now showing that updated toolpath.
Yes, a great comfort for the operator to know where the probe is going to move about in the machine.
So now we've got that, it’s a similar situation to other programming methods, we just hit the send button.
That's going to send that program now to the NC, and upload it ready to run.
Straight over Ethernet. That's right.
Because this is a self-contained program, it has tool change, switch on, we don't have to do anything else.
We simply need to stick it into memory, and we can run that cycle.
Great, it’s as easy as that.
So what that's going to do now is, come down, take a point on top, and then four points in the bore.
Of course, this is a self-contained program, so all we need to do is just change one of the settings in here to make it a sub-program,
and then you can just call this from any cutting program that you have as part of your manufacturing process.
So it takes the worry out of having to, turn the probe on, call the work offsets and put all your measurements in there.
OK, great, thanks very much.
What we've seen there, is how measurements can be built up into a sequence an added into a cutting program.
For more information go to www.renishaw.com/onmachineapps.