Hi, I'm Jason, a Machinist here with Tormach.
Today we are going to talk about gang tooling. We're going to cover what it is...
...why you would use it, what are the advantages and disadvantages of it.
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Some of the main advantages you are going to see with gang tooling is...
...you can put a lot more tools on the table in a smaller space.
This is really going to save you time....
...when you are making parts into your cycle time.
It's going to keep your tool changes short since you are only going to have to move...
...you know, an inch or two in between each tool. You won't have to a clearance position.
Also, it's really going to help your cycle times.
You can also get a benefit from it by having quicker setups.
You can setup individual gang plates for specific jobs.
Almost like a pallet system for your tooling.
So this allows you to switch between jobs nice and quickly.
Since it works really well on small diameter parts it doesn't work really well on large diameter parts...
...since you need to have clearance in between each tool for the part.
This kind of inhibits you with a very large diameter part.
You also need to be pretty careful and plan out each tool, where you are going to put it...
...on the table and how you are going to transition from one tool to the next.
Since everything is in such close quarters you need really to manage that when you are doing your programming.
So this comes to play whether you are programming with...
...conversational, manually programming or if you are programming in CAM.
And then gang tooling also doesn't offer the flexibility of...
...of like a turret or a quick change tool post since...
...each tool setup is going to be pretty specific for each job.
It's hard to have a very flexible, open gang tooling setup that will just work for any scenario.
There are three main components to a gang tooling setup.
You are going to have the gang plate, which is typically a t-slotted plate.
For the Tormach 15L Lathe we offer a full gang plate, which covers the entire carriage of the machine.
And we offer a half gang plate , which can be used in conjunction with a quick change tool post or our automatic 8-position turret.
You also have risers, which will be dependent on your tool size.
So if you are going to use half-inch or three quarter inch tooling you will have to buy the appropriate riser.
And then you are going to have holders, that are specific to the kind of tooling you are going to use...
...whether it's an end mill or boring bar or an ER holder for drills and taps.
So you can see on this machine we have a gang tooling setup which makes this
this two piece pawn that we run as a demo part.
So we have to do some OD threading, we have a tapping operation, then we have some turning and grooving that we have to do.
As you can see in here we have a full gang plate which covers the entire length of the machine.
These are the riser blocks. This is what our tool holders actually mount on.
So on this lower block we have our grooving/parting tool that we use for cutting the part off and grooving.
Which is mounted on a dove tail system.
And then we have our OD tool mounted on a dovetail block.
Up here you can see we are actually using an ID...
...threading boring bar to do the external threads. So we have that mounted on a single block on top.
And then here we have a three position gang block that has our spot, our drill and our tap.
When you are installing all these you need to make sure, especially on your drills,
that you shim the block for the proper height so that they are on center with the spindle.
So you can see on this machine we shimmed the entire riser block up to get the tools on center.
With the dove tail holders you can adjust these very similar to how you adjust the quick....
...change tool post. You just set this height with a screw.
So you can dial that right in.
When you are using a gang tool setup you have to teach your tools the same way whether you are using a turret or...
...a quick change tool post it's just that each tool is going to be...
..in a different orientation so you need to make sure that you select the proper position in PathPilot.
You can see our grooving tool is mounted on the bottom of the part here.
So if we load up our grooving tool you'll see on the PathPilot interface that...
...our tool's are represented on the bottom side of the part.
And one other thing you'll notice is that we have a six position manifold...
...installed in this machine to supply coolant to all of our different tools.
So when you are touching off your tools in PathPilot, these are going to be your default screen before you...
actually select. So here we are going to set tool 15.
If we want to set our OD turning tool we are going to select the picture that represents our tool.
So in this scenario this tool will have a...
...OD turning tool that is faced down, so we're going to select this tool.
As you can see it's going to give us tip orientation number 2.
At this point we can jog the machine over to the part.
We can touch off our diameter, we can set it, you know if we are at 950 thou we can say...
...950, touch X. And then once we set X...
You can see our DRO is going to update to 950 thou, and then we can jog our machine over...
So that Z is touching the part.
So we're going to jog it over to Z zero. We are going to put in zero. We're going to say touch Z.
You are going to see the DRO update to Z zero.
And you just work these with each individual tool the same as a turret or a quick change tool post setup.
So let's go ahead and make some chips with this setup. We can show you guys how it runs.
One thing to pay attention to is you'll notice..
...between the OD turning tool and our grooving tool that the tool clearance is pretty tight because...
The stock actually has to traverse in between those two tools as it's making the part so...
...you'll see that the tool clearances and everything in this setup do get a little tight.
So we'll go ahead and make some chips now.
You can also see on the PathPilot interface that the tool path display is going to represent...
...the direction and the side. So you can see the path down here.
This is...
You can click on this line segment and it will show us we are on tool eight, which our grooving and our parting tool.
So it does represent the tool path on the proper side of the part for us.
So we'll go a head and get this started up.
So in this program we just have a programmed stop at M zero in there..
...to stop the parting tool at 20 thou in front of the zero position.
This just allows us to use that tool as a bump stop.
So we'll take out our part here.
Release the 5C collet. We'll use the parting tool as a bump stop.
And then we'll just re-clamp the tool, so all in one program we make both pieces of the pawn.
So from here we can just hit cycle start again, and it will cut the head of the pawn.
You can see our pawn head is now complete we can...
...get the chips off of this and should be able to thread these together.
So we have a two piece pawn that we make on this gang tool setup.
And you'll notice as this runs that we have our OD turning and our grooving tool so when it's cutting the head of the pawn...
...it transitions from that OD turning all the way up to the threading tool.
So you always want to refine things as you work through it.
You know to really optimize this setup for this part it's be nice to have our OD turning...
...option a lot closer to our threading so that..that...
..rapid time and cycle time you can really reduce quite a bit...
...if you really want to dial a setup like this in.
It's just one of the things you get to play with as you learn and grow...
and have more fun with as you work through different projects.
So as you can see there's many different options, many different way to hold your tools to ah...
...make your different components you have to make.
Gang tooling is one option that works really well in certain scenarios and...
..and for real small parts it works really well.
For larger diameter parts it may not be a great fit but,
it definitely has a home for small diameter parts.
So this has been an overview of gang tooling. Be sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel...
...for more videos on CNC equipment.
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