Adaptive CNC Tool Monitoring System Maximizes Tool Life and Reduces Cycle Time

Our adaptive tool monitoring system, TMAC, for CNC machining, can optimize any cutting operation. TMAC maximizes tool life, reduces cycle time and safeguards the machining process by accurately measuring tool wear in real-time. It has the fast capability to stop the machine within milliseconds when tool breakage is detected.

Full Video Transcript

Ok so the first tool we are going to look at is a small 1mm drill drilling in aluminum. We’re going to be able to see the sensitivity of TMAC monitoring this very small drill. You can actually see the steps of the one millimeter drill it’s going to drill three holes in the material. This would be typically impossible to monitor on most systems on a 25 horsepower spindle motor. The next tool we’ll look at is a really larger drill, and we’re going to demonstrate the ability to monitor the work of the tool – the area under the curve. As the tool starts cutting, you can actually see the shading of the area under the curve where it’s showing the blue, which is an undercut. Once satisfied, it hits green which is now an okay cut, and this particular tool generated a wear limit where it actually started shading in yellow. That means the tool is worn and will be replaced on the next instant. Now we’re going to show tapping where we’re using a technique called time slicing. Here we’re looking at the gray area is all the reversals of the spindle and are ignored. The black area is when we’re actually monitoring the cutting of the tap. It’s only in its forward motion that we monitor. This is very easy to set up in TMAC 3.0, and the cuts can now be labeled so we know when we’re cutting and when we’re not cutting. The next tool we’re going to show adaptive control. Here we have a target power the system is trying to achieve, and TMAC will take over the feed rate and automatically modify the feed rate to maintain that constant power. The dotted green line is what it’s trying to achieve. As the power gets above the green line, the feed rate is reduced. When it goes below the green line the feed rate is increased. This will continually go over time. As you can see by this view, we’re actually monitoring power and vibration simultaneously. This allows us to look at the health of vibration of the tool while the tools do an adaptive cutting, giving us a more advanced analysis on what’s happening with this tool in the cut. Using adaptive control with the TMAC 3.0 our customers are saving between 20 and 60 percent. The tougher the material, the more cycle time savings is available to them. [Music]