I’m looking into building a ATC for my Tormach.
I’m going to build one that works like a Haas tool
room mill tool changer.

It will sit to the left of the spindle and slide under
it on a track and hold 10 tools in a round magazine.

The Tormach is setup with steppers, should I put a
stepper on the magazine to index it or use a servo?


Chris

You could use eiter, a servo may be slightly better in the respect that if it was out of position your drive would fault. Then again I would presume you would be using some sort of encoder or limits switches to ensure that it is in the correct position, if so then the stepper would be just as good.
Look forward to seeing how you get on, how are you going to release the tools? Has the Tormach got a power drawbar? Is it R8 or another taper?
Hood

It has an R8, I'm using there tooling.
I'm working on the draw bar now.

Chris,

Have you seen the Hoss ATC yet?

He has built it on CNC Zone and it's on his site. Many of us are building them also.

http://www.hossmachine.info/projects_7.html

Bill

Yes I’ve seen it and there’s a guy that has a youtube video of a similar setup for a Haas tool room mill.

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P3wjO0aaKLQ

I would like something a little more commercial.
Those open type tool changers will let chips
gather on them and they will shorten the useable
X travel.

Making a door that will retract will be easy.
I have a couple saws in the shop that have
blade guards that retract as you pull them down.

Making the changer will be cake.
The only thing that I will have to
trouble that I can foresee is setting up
mach to do what I wont it to do.

There are some very bright people on
this forum that I’m shore won’t mind
holding my hand when the time comes.

I do have a question, will mach take limit switch
inputs other than the XYZ’s that's on the machine now?

If I can have my way I would us limit switch’s
to let Mach know that a cycle has be completed.

This would make things simple.           

Here is a pic of my Tormach after a days work with
Acetron GP.

mach will take limit switch no problem as long as you can find enough Inputs. You wont actually set them as limits in the normal sense, you will just use them as Inputs. On the lathe I have there is a rear turret and a front post. The rear turret uses 6 switches and the front has 5, the only realistic way at the moment to get all the inputs is ModBUS and that is why I used a PLC. Using the PLC also takes some of the problems out of configuring things as you can do a lot of the routine within the PLC's ladder.
Hood

Thanks Hood.

Could you go into a little more detail of how you useing your PLC?

Well depends what you are wanting to know, theres quite a lot
Basically I have my PLC taking Inputs and it also outputs. The ladder inside the PLC does certain things depending on what Inputs and Outputs  are active. The PLC controls my gearbox clutches, the spindle Fwd/Rev, and spindle motors two speeds. I also have the front toolpost and rear turret, the coolant for front and rear, four or five panel buttons, and although I dont have the hydraulic chuck on now it also opened and closed the chuck and probably some other things that I have forgotten LOL.
 Basically what happens is when my code asks for a tool my toolchange macro will send a signal to the PLC which will then start the toolchange routine, it keeps cycling until  it sees the correct sequence of Inputs from the switches then stops and then sends a signal to Mach to tell it the correct tool is in position. If for some reason the correct tool is not seen then the turret will just keep cycling and Mach will just wait. The same goes for the front toolpost.
 The ladder for the toolchange was pretty simple, the one for the gearbox cllutches is a bit more complicated as there are 5 clutches which control the eight speeds in each motor range, oh and thats the other thing I forgot, there are also a couple of limits on the manual gearbox lever so I know whether its in High or low ratio and if the speed I ask for is when I am in the wrong range it will tell me and wait for action. Below is the part of the ladder for the rear turret (tool1-6)

Hood

Well from what you are telling me your setup is more complex
than mine will be.

Tormach doesn't send the Mach manual with there mill
it is pre-configured.

I will have to down load the manual and start there.

What PLC are you useing?

Its a DL06 PLC from Automation Direct, the type I have  is D0-06DR which is powered by 110-220VAC and has 20 Inputs and 16 Relay outputs.
Hood