Strategy for setting up WCS for a secondary spindle?

[FlySox]

I’ve got a Tormach High Speed Spindle “outrigger” kit (see pic) attached to my Sharp knee mill (Bridgeport clone). Question for the group is the best strategy for setting up the 0,0,0 coordinates of the secondary spindle, given that I have a probe (Hallmark ITTP) for the main spindle.

I guess I could probe a corner of a squared piece of scrap and set zeros, and then drill a hole in the scrap with the outrigger spindle. I could then probe the hole and subtract the difference between those coordinates and that of G54 to set zeros for G55. I could just get Z for G55 using the “paper touch” method.

I doubt this is the most straight-forward way, not to mention the difficulty/inaccuracy of probing a relatively small drilled hole. Any bright ideas out there?

[tblough]

Drill a big hole and then bore it with the main spindle and the use a test indicator in the high speed spindle to indicate the hole.

[suntravel]

Once you have measured the offset, you can use a macro to set G55 automatic for the second spindle

Code: Select all

; probe part with main spindle in G54 and set G55 for second spindle

#120 = #2500 ; G54 X
#121 = #2600 ; G54 Y
#122 = 15 ; Offset X, type in the measured offset from 2.spindle
#123 = 30 ; Offset Y, type in the measured offset from 2.spindle

#2502 = #120 + #122 ; Set G55 to measured offset X
#2602 = #121 + #123 ; Set G55 to measured offset Y

M30

Uwe