Tool Breakage detection

[asho]

Hey,



Just bought a Masso G3 and am in the process of building a gantry style cnc mill from the ground up, a question i have is can i add tool breakage detection to my automatic tool change process? I want to have my mill check the tool before it puts it away, if the tool is shorter (or longer i guess) when measured than the tool library has recorded, then it alarms out and waits for user input.



Hope this makes sense.



Regards,

Ash

 

[asho]

Hmmm....this topic didn't seem to gain much interest, lucky there are other forums out there with heaps of info. As it turns out i managed to find a solution. If you are a fusion 360 user there is a checkbox in the tool library for tool breakage. I'm hoping this will do what i want it to. Would be nice for it to be written in the script for auto tool changes though. Oh well this will do the job i guess.

 

[cncnutz]

Hi Ash

While I don't know what the tool breakage box in Fusion actually does , I feel sure that it will not do what you want it to do on MASSO.
There is no tool breakage detection built into MASSO.

I believe that you are the first person to mention such a feature.
You can request features in the feature request section, others can comment and if there is sufficient interest from other users in such a feature it may get added in a future update.
It would pay to add as much information as you can about how it would work.
What criteria would determine a broken tool.
How it will determine difference between a broken tool and a tool touch off switch measurement variation for example.
0.01mm on a 20 degree V bit is either the tip broken off or the tolerance of a mechanical touch off switch. How will it tell the difference.

Hope the build is going well for you.
Cheers
Peter

 

[asho]

Hey Peter @cncnutz,

Appreciate you taking the time to respond, yes i imagine it's not a common requirement for the majority of people. I am wanting to ultimately set my machine up to make multiples of the same part. Ideally, once the process is proven out, i would like it to run unattended and so knowing when there is a broken tool will be a must. As far as tolerences are concerened that will come down to as you say the repeatability of your tool setter and your machine and then work from there to find and acceptable/achieveable tolerence to trigger a tool breakage scenario. If like you say the tolerance of your toolsetter was 0.01mm and you broke the tip off your v bit then you would have compounding error and that should be fairly easy to establish a tolerance.

If I understand what you are saying correctly, MASSO won't register that when it last used tool 10 it had an offset of -10mm and now it has an offset of -15mm and alarm out. So it will just adjust all the offsets based on the current measurement of tool 10 and destroy the rest of your tools? Or it will just adjust tool 10 and then destroy a few tools that will go to do a finish pass where material was actually not removed in the first place due to a broken tool?

I definately will need the ability to have my machine alarm out if i have a broken tool (the parameters around tolerence should be user adjustable due to accuracy of machine and tool setter), can the end user not write their own macros etc to gain this sort of functionality? If this is something that can only be done by virtue of popularity among users then i may have made the wrong choice in controller, i'm not having a dig at MASSO at all i think this product is fantastic and have had my eye on it for a long time. I should have done my homework regarding this particular feature as it will eventually play a major part in how i run my machine, so my bad.

Hopefully it is something i can find a way around as i really like the MASSO by comparrison to any of the other controllers i have had or researched.

Kind regards,

Ash

 

[tmtoronto]

I am not sure if this is helpful, but Fusion 360 has a tool break setting that can be enabled, which can then be used with a tool setter to detect a broken tool. I do not have have enough real life experience with CNCs or Masso yet to know if this would be a solution. I have also seen other devises that use lasers - from Blum for example - that can detect tool length changes, but again I do not know if this can be integrated with the Masso controller.

 

[breezy]

@asho

Ash,

can i add tool breakage detection to my automatic tool change process? I want to have my mill check the tool before it puts it away, if the tool is shorter (or longer i guess) when measured than the tool library has recorded, then it alarms out and waits for user input.

Discussed this at today's meeting and it is feasible if Auto Tool Zero is turned on.

What M/G code do you envisage to use to trigger the tool breakage detection?

What tolerance do you consider safe to continue machining? Should the tolerance be user definable?

Could you put together a document of how you expect this to work, step by step logic and send it to Support@masso.com.

I moved this topic from Q&A to Feature Request, hopefully other members of the forum will make suggestions.

Regards,

Arie.

 

[asho]

@breezy

Hey Arie,



Thanks for your response much appreaciated, I thought of it as being part of the M6 automatic tool change macro, however i understand that this may not be something everyone wants or needs so perhaps there can be 2 auto tool change options, one with tool breakage detection and the option to adjust the acceptable tolelrance the user is looking for.

I have been fairly busy of late, as soon as i get a chance i will sit down and step out the logic the way i see it.



Thanks again,

Ash

 

[unlockedcomposites]

I can honestly help with this, i have a dental mill running logsol software that has super efficient.

within Each tool Change it will

1. Retract Z axis to home
   
2. Move over tool setter
   
3. Run touch off routine
   
4. If tool is more or less than existing offset value by +-0.020" it e stops
   If tool is within tolerance, it will continue
   
5. continue with tool change macro using auto touch off after picking up new tool
   

It has saved a ton on crashes and wasting material
it also has tool life monitoring that is awesome (think resettable timers for each tool that only counts down as the are being used)

I have integrated the masso into my ATC 6090 Machine, So far everything is going pretty well(would like to know where/how to change macros myself

The Masso controller is great and I appreciate the amount of support here!

Features like these are really great value added!

Let me know how i can help further,

Travis

 

[asho]

@unlockedcomposites Hey Travis,

Yes that's exactly what i want to get setup on my machine. I don't believe you can write macros for MASSO, you submit a request such as this one and they will implement it. They asked me to put a doc together outlining exactly how it should work and email it to Support@masso.com

I haven't had the time yet to get that done but I will get there shortly hopefully.

Thanks for your comment.



Ash

 

[breezy]

@asho, @unlockedcomposites,

We discussed this again at our weekly meeting and have defined a concept for implementing this.

• In the F1 screen a checkbox is set to indicate that tool breakage test is to be performed.
  
• In the F4 screen a column will be provided for the tolerance to be entered for each tool.
  
• On tool change command the existing tool will go through the auto tool length function and the measured result compared to the first ATL, if tolerance is exceeded machine stop and alarm.
  If it passes the tolerance test MASSO will continue with the tool change.
  
• If no tolerance value is entered for a tool, system will skip second test.
  

We would like your comments on this scheme.

Regards,

Arie.

 

[unlockedcomposites]

• @breezy
  

This definitely sounds good and let me know if I'm asking too much but also would it be possible to have a box that I could adjust all breakage detection values to a single value.

It would definitely be a Time saver when running 30 plus tools

That way it would make it easy to add values to all the tools and then take away the ones that might not need to breakage detection

In previous experiences the breakage detection value doesn't need to be a precise number, depending on the substrate that people are working on there could be a tolerable chip buildup which is acceptable (for example a little bit of nylon stuck to the end of a drill or endmill) and usually anything more or less than 0.01 of an inch (having access to asjusting that value though is very nice.)

I feel like I've chosen right going with Masso I appreciate your guys's goals and values.

I spent my entire career working in designing, fabrication and CNC the last three spent in a custom integration robotics company before I decided to go out work my own business full time.

I used my first Masso I purchased to refit a brand new automatic tool change machine from China that had had controls that were almost hilariously unreliable. It is so far served me well and I look forward to refitting my other machines as I grow.

 

[asho]

@breezy Hey, apologies for the delayed response. Yes that sounds perfect, can't wait to try it out. Although i am still a few weeks away from having my tool rack setup for auto tool changes, ah and a few other things.

I am so grateful for the effort you guys put in to this.

Regards,

Ash

 

[konchi]

@breezy this is also excactly what i'm after, it would be great to see it implemented.



thanks,

Alfred

 

[unlockedcomposites]

definitely prepared to test this if you need someone to trial it. This is one of the biggest things from keeping me moving forward on my other 3 machines i want to retrofit



I also can provide videos and menu examples of similar setups

 

[asho]

@asho, @unlockedcomposites,

We discussed this again at our weekly meeting and have defined a concept for implementing this.

• In the F1 screen a checkbox is set to indicate that tool breakage test is to be performed.
• In the F4 screen a column will be provided for the tolerance to be entered for each tool.
• On tool change command the existing tool will go through the auto tool length function and the measured result compared to the first ATL, if tolerance is exceeded machine stop and alarm.
  If it passes the tolerance test MASSO will continue with the tool change.
• If no tolerance value is entered for a tool, system will skip second test.

We would like your comments on this scheme.

Regards,

Arie.

Hey @breezy,

Hope you had a good festive season and had some time of with the family.

It has been quite some time since i was last on here, have my mill running well and jumped online looking for updates and remembered this thread. Just wondering if this ever made it in to testing phase?

Kind regards,
Ash

 

[zombieengineer]

@asho

There is a potential work around if you have the tool setter and touch probe inputs linked.

The work around relies on the automatic tool setter calibrating the tool offset such that when the tool touches the top of the tool setter that the machine Z position is stored as the tool offset.

Steps for the work-around tool breakage detection:

• Select a Work Co-ordinate System with a zero Z offset
• Move the tool over the tool setter
• Use G38.2 (Straight Probe Cycle) with Z target of -0.1 mm (this is the allowable wear)
  • Should the tool setter trigger the touch probe input before the Z target is reached the job will continue
  • Should the tool setter not trigger when the Z target is reached "the program stops and an alarm is displayed on the screen"

An obvious gotcha here is the requirement for the WCS to have a zero Z offset, this can potentially be bypassed by using the G53 (Move In Absolute Machine Coordinates). You are likely to need to use G53 for both the "move to tool setter location" and the "probing cycle".

DISCLAIMER - I have not tested the above but it is a theoretical solution to your tool breakage detection requirements.

---

Edit #1:
Potential problem: According the Haas documentation the G53 command will ignore tool offsets which is required for the above work around to function correctly. Then MASSO documentation does not mention any impact of tool offsets when using the G53 command.

---

Edit #2:
The tool offset issue with G53 command can be bypassed using the G92 (Temporary Work Offset)

Steps would be:

• G0 G53 X### Y### Z### [where the co-ordinate is the machine position to start Automatic Tool Length calibration]
• G92 Z### [enable temporary work offset, use the same Z position as above]
• G38.2 Z-0.1 [position is the maximum overshoot due to tool wear]
• G92.1 [cancel temporary work offset]

 

[unlockedcomposites]

@zombieengineer
im going to play with this, thankyou for bringing up this possibility!!!

 

[zombieengineer]

@unlockedcomposites - The work around assumes that when the tool setter triggers that it also triggers the touch probe input.

 

[asho]

@zombieengineer Thank you so much for taking the time to share, will definitely have a go at this. I should be able to create a sub program that will run with each tool change right? I have never really done anything like this, i am always at the mercy of what features are available. I wonder if some changes could be made in the Fusion 360 post processor to achieve this work around.

Cheers,
Ash

 

[zombieengineer]

@asho - a couple of things to note:

• The method assumes that the tool setter and touch probe are linked together (this is critical)
• The method uses the temporary work offset which may (but unlikely) already be in use within a CNC job
• The method is currently unproven

The tool breakage detection method should theoretically work but needs to be proven in real life.

Looking at the code again - I am not sure that it would give the correct result. The G38.2 may require the target Z to be the current tool offset.