As I am learning daily how to leverage the amazing capabilities of this little machine I have been making some very small parts. While looking at them very close up I noticed that some of the features are slightly, and I do mean slightly off center in the direction of the X axis. I will attach a picture to show what I mean. The deviation is very slight, perhaps 10-12 thousandths of an inch, but when I machine two opposing features on opposite sides of the part as shown here the error of course stacks up and gets worse. I have dons some reading and apparently it is possible to get into some of the calibration settings and make an adjustment there. Is this in fact possible, and furthermore is it even advisable, or is there another route I can pursue
Yes, you can adjust your [JOINT_0]HOME_OFFSET in the Config tab > Server tab > Machine Config panel > INI Overlay tab. The HOME_OFFSET represents the position of the machine at the homing sensor. I definitely would recommend making very small adjustments to it. We calibrate that number before the machine goes out the door, but it can drift over time.
Hi John,
is there a useful routine, to calibrate this and also the other offsets? Are you internally using referencing parts for this procedure? How do they look like?
Wil
PS: Currently I use a touch probe to increase accuracy…
We cut a simple square into round stock with A at 90. Then rotate B 180 degrees and touch off in X and Y to determine how off it is from nominal. You can do this a few times to dial it in.
Thanks, using your guidance I was able to get it dialed in. I ended up changing it by . 016" and now the pins on opposite sides of the part are nicely aligned. I will add that I found it necessary to re home the machine each time after I hit save settings to have the changes take effect. Now in my continued experimenting today I have found another issue which I assume can be resolved through a similar set of adjustments. When the rotary is turned at 90° and I am machining a part from the top side my part is not perfectly centered in my bar stock. I assume that this means I need to make an adjustment to my y-axis possibly? I will include a picture to demonstrate what I am talking about. Again the error is very small given the fact that for reference the shaft shown here is only 1/8 of an inch in diameter. I’m just not certain what to adjust since as I said the rotary is turned 90° at this point so although I assume I need to adjust the y value I am not entirely positive.
Send an email to service@pocketnc.com. I will send you a document explaining how to calibrate your X and Y axes in the field. I will also send a spreadsheet that helps simplify the calibration process. You will need an ER40 adapter and 1 inch ER40 collet, a 1 inch cylindrical Delrin stock, and a 1/8" tool (we recommend the Harvey tool number 24208, which is a 2 flute flat end mill).
I decided to come up with a method on my own I will describe what I did and you can tell me where I may or may not have gone wrong. I put an ER 40 call it in the table and tightened it down on a 5 mm end Mill the smallest that I have. Then in the tool holder I mounted another 5 mm tool and brought the two tips together I looked at them under a jewelers loop and got them aligned in all accesses. What I have found is that my y-axis seems to be off . 0119" using that value I went into the calibrations for joint 1 and edited it first buy that amount from the baseline and then next subtracted that amount from the baseline. I hit save and rehome the machine and then manually jog it back until the two end mills are once again as close to perfectly aligned as I can possibly get them visually. To my surprise I am still off the same 12000 of an inch. Somehow it seems that I am failing to apply the settings I do hit save and it does in fact accept the new value in the box for the joint one calibration value. I also home the machine afterwards before manually jogging it back into physical alignment to see how that corresponds to the electronic alignment shown on the screen. I will include a picture of the values of both position and actual position and hopefully that will make sense to you and you might be able to point me in the right direction.
Hi there, so i have the exact same issue with our machine, it machines ever so slightly off centre. I will need the document to fix emailed on to me, ill send a mail requesting. Super thread, extremely helpful…To Johns point below the issue is exaggerated when you rotate the B axis 180…this fis isnt that easy but a great learning curve all the same, great work lads…
