It's a corny catchphrase, but it's true: if you're not making chips, you're not making money! While that saying has made many a machinist roll their eyes, spindle-on time is one of the key performance indicators for the productivity of your machines.
If you spend significant time programming tool offsets at the machine, your spindle is not running. An investment in tool presetting can be paid back quickly by measuring the extra hours of cutting time that stack up when toolsetting is made more efficient.
In the old days, a tool setter could use a surface plate or "tombstone" with a height guage to measure tool offsets. However, this kind of accuracy won't cut it for high-tolerance machining. Zoller's automatic tool presetting equipment can record offset accurate to within 0.002mm. It can also apply a label that the machine tool can read, such as barcode or RFID tag, eliminating the need to enter offset data manually.
If your process requires 2 micron accuracy, factors like the spindle runout of the machine tool itself may become an issue. According to Zoller, the automatic presetter can even index the tool to compensate for the machine-specific runout.
Cost savings, uptime efficiency, and better quality are possible with automatic tool presetting. For more information, visit Zoller.