plained Blind. “Our goal is to get as close to the machine tool as possible, so the TPE200 is only 1" square, compared to traditional air gage transducers that are as large as 10" square.” He reported that companies that provide honing or inner diameter grinding are finding the transducer as attractive components of their machine tools. The TPE200 also contains three pre-defined, numerical filters. These filters can be set to optimize the output for either standard, high-precision, or high-speed measurements.
Another way of measuring tool wear and breakage indirectly during opera- tion is through monitoring the torque and power on the tool spindle. For example, Caron Engineering (Wells, ME) has long offered its Tool Monitoring Adaptive Control (TMAC) that operates on the principle that horsepower required to cut a part increases as the tool’s cutting edges deteriorates. “Our newest product is a multiprocess- ing version of that principle we call TMAC-MP,” explained Rob Caron, president of Caron Engineer- ing. “[TMAC-MP] is really target- ing Swiss-type machines and multifunction, multiuse machines where there are multiple processes happening simulta- neously.” He noted that a Swiss-type lathe often runs untended, making process control
The new Renishaw RMI-Q is used to activate either the spindle-mounted touch probe or table-mounted tool setting probe, and gives visual indication of the activated device.
vital. “For example, operators might put a bar feeder on the end of the machine that holds 20 bars that are each 12' [0.3-m] long while the part is only ½" [12.7- mm] long. It is going to run awhile before an operator needs to do anything,” he explained. Detecting worn or broken tools automatically is vital. “Our new system allows you to monitor all of these motions and processes simultaneously. The num- ber is limited only by the size of the processor we select,” he said, adding that most Swiss-type lathes run no more than four simultaneous processes. Why use such methods over direct sensing? “A laser or touch probe are difficult to fit into such small spaces as a Swiss-type lathe. It is a very tight environment.” Calibration curves