Przemek, As I said to Dave, there is almost never a power drive on the knee. So, figuring out which to move via CNC is a trivial exercise;) But you have to move the knee between operations for different length tools all the time. And the quill of a BP isn't the stiffest thing around so you typically want it as retracted as possible (yet still be able to reach the clearance plane.)
This all comes from thinking about manual machines w/ DROs. There are combiner boxes avail that take a scale on both the quill and knee and add/subtract them to feed into the DRO display. Some newer ones can do it internally I think. So it doesn't matter which you move, the Z axis display on the DRO reads the total. Move the quill up 2" and the knee up 2" and the Z display stays the same. You don't need to touch-off again, and again, and again, ... Imagine doing some 3D profiling w/ a short endmill. You'd want the knee fairly high to maximize quill stiffness. When you get to a M6 tool change, say to a long drill or tapping head, you could load the tool and lower the knee until there was safe clearance and press cycle start again. Next M6 you can do the same. It would be slickest to write some sort of macro Accuracy & backlash on a knee screw isn't a problem if you have a glass scale (or equivalent) mounted;) As long as you remember to lock it every time before cutting like you're supposed to, its all good. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Got visibility? Most devs has no idea what their production app looks like. Find out how fast your code is with AppDynamics Lite. http://ad.doubleclick.net/clk;262219671;13503038;y? http://info.appdynamics.com/FreeJavaPerformanceDownload.html _______________________________________________ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
