Belvac Uses ESPRIT to Power Automatic Tool Sheet Generation
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By DAN PARRY - manufacturing engineer with Belvac Production Machinery, Inc. I never cease to pause in amazement when I reflect upon the technological feats accomplished and built upon within the CNC machining industry. From ferocious boiler systems feeding belt-driven pulley lines that propelled manual machines to cut their way into history to modern day machining — where we smugly sit back and watch machines intuitively obey our every command — the principles of machining have remained the same throughout this astonishing evolution. Just as they did during the turn of the 20th century, those in the modern-day machining industry depend on a diverse collection of cutting tools to form raw material into masterpieces of precisely made parts. This wide assortment of necessary cutting tools, though proudly and accurately collected, often pose problems to organizational methods and knowing when — and when not to — obsolete tooling based on new technology. Things are no different at Belvac Production Machinery, where we are constantly looking for means of arranging and utilizing our cutting tools in ways that maximize productivity while simultaneously evaluating new developments in the cutting tool industry. The ESPRIT Cutting Tool Manager makes the sometimes overwhelming task of creating, managing and testing new cutting tools a controllable undertaking. ESPRIT has taken the potentially complicated duty of creating tools and made it simple, to the point where any programmer can create and add tools to our carefully constructed library. Once the tools have made their way into the Tooling Manager, they are easily sorted and categorized using the masterful sorting functionality supplied with ESPRIT’s Tooling Manager, which is backed by very Windows-like functionality (there was a technical bulletin featured in the Jan. 28 issue of ESPRIT de Corps that covers general use of the Tooling Manager). Tool Sheet Generation Though antiquated machining techniques have given way to the modern, the principles of machining remain the same. “Belvac Uses ESPRIT to Power Automatic Tool Sheet Generation” Once the tools are unerringly added to our company’s ESPRIT tool library, they are centrally shared by all programmers and each individual has real-time access to additions and modifications via the SQL Express utility supplied with every ESPRIT installation. Security can even be arranged for the individuals accessing the library to ensure that tools are not inadvertently deleted or changed. With such an extensive amount of effort funded into making certain that our electronic tool database is exact, it is equally vital that the machine operators understand the same details that have been put into the creation of these cutting tools. It is within this area that many hours of my career have been spent. dptechnology.com

SAMPLE TOOL SHEET I assumed there maybe other ESPRIT users faced with this problem and therefore decided that I would use this article to discuss the one method that I have found most useful. After trying and falling short with many different means of communicating the details of a cutting tool library to the machine operators, I have finally found one that consolidates multiple file types and eliminates the need for maintaining redundant information. Rather than maintaining multiple libraries and/or databases of tooling information, we at Belvac decided to focus our attention where it had...

SAMPLE GENERIC TOOL SETUP "IF BL IS O.OJQ THERE IS NO EXTENSION. USE TL FOR TOOL DIM. *IF BL IS 0.030 THEN ED SHOULD EQUAL TD while for the machine operators to remember what they all stand for. To help with this scenario, we have provided the machine operators with a picture of a generic tool that depicts the dimensions on the tool that each column heading The next part of the post processor is where the real magic happens. We use the EX_TOOLDEFINITION example to sequentially pull the parameters from the ESPRIT tool and populate the individual columns in the tool set-up sheet using that...

In conclusion, ESPRIT’s ability to automatically output a tool sheet based on the tools used in a program provides many benefits to our company. Potential errors are eliminated by focusing solely on the tool information entered within the CAM system rather than duplicating this data inside of a tool management system or some other means of storing electronic tools. We also estimate a conservative 3% reduction in the time it takes to create a single program by not having to create a separate tool sheet to deploy tool setup information to the machine operators. Not to mention the time saved...

Tool Sheet Generation Parry’s son, Daniel, explores the fantastic world of tools and manufacturing. DP Technology Corp. 1150 Avenida Acaso Camarillo, CA 93012 USA that much more time to focus on automating other parts of our processes. One win at a time, we will continue to use ESPRIT, “The Most Powerful CAM Software Ever,” to quickly and efficiently produce NC programs. g Phone: 1 800 627-8479 Outside the US: + 1 805 388-6000 Email: esprit@dptechnology.com ESPRIT is a registered trademark of DP Technology Corp. ©2011 DP Technology Corp. All rights reserved.