My biggest concern about adding the ATC is the height of my spoil board. I run a Black Box Vac, so my spoil board is 2x 3/4" MDF plus the height of my work piece - typically another 3/4" sheet good that takes up the full cutting area on my machine. I believe the clearance from frame to gantry is 8". When I account for spoil board, vac board and work piece (2-1/4" total) that only leaves 5-3/4" clear. Is that enough room for the moving tool rack to clear? Also, I see most 30 taper tool holders are over 4-1/2" long which would leave only 1-1/4" for tool stick out… Am I thinking about this correctly or does the rack stop short of the spoil board and rely on the “extra” Y-axis travel to position the spindle over the tool rack, thus allowing the overall tool length to be in excess of the clearance from gantry to spoil board..?
Sorry for all the detail, but this will be a big investment to bring the machine into ATC compliance and I want to make sure the upgrade won’t interfere with our workflow.
This is mounting the spindle at our recommended height. You can raise that up too, especially in your situation where you have a double/triple spoilboard thickness, you’ll gain more clearance that way.
The good news is that in this case clearance is clearance, the tool holders are a fixed height and never change, so if you can clear over them, you’re good to go.
Thank you Eric and JeffsDesign! I have a couple contingency plans if the tolerances are too tight or if I wind up working with thicker material. I can always reduce the height of my vac board by using 1/2" ABS instead of 3/4" MDF. I can also shave down my spoil board a bit as well. If all else fails, I could replace the 80/20 aluminum crossmembers with a slimmer profile or with steel tube and probably buy myself an additional inch of clearance.
One other question… Looking at the ATC system page on the website - The 8HP spindle option comes with 4 tool holders… The “fill your rack” option adds 5 more (to make a total of 9). Should the fill your rack option include 6 holders to make the rack 10 positions? Not trying to be picky, just trying to understand if I need to order an additional tool holder.
Don’t forget there’s a lot of room to slide the spindle up and down on the drop plate so this won’t be necessary. You’ll have the spindle off anyway when you install the system so you’ll have the choice to move it up.
The wording on the website is a little odd, but that’s for additional tool holders. When you get the ATC system you’ll get enough to fill your rack… So that means tool bins and ISO tool holders. If you wanted EXTRA ISO tool holders you’d add them in that “extra tool holders” drop down. (You should get some extra!)
First, a comment - yes, get more ISO tool holders. In my case, I buy two kinds - expensive precision kinds for high speed bits, and cheap ones on Amazon for low speed (or no-speed) bits. Always good to have more on hand, and if you can afford it, one dedicated to each “tool number” (with a sticker!) helps organize things. I’ve 3D-printed some ISO hangers that fit in the 4080 to store the un-racked tools and spares.
Second - would the 12" Z travel option be any help here? I find I’ve started adding “longer” tools to my collection, and getting the spindle high enough so those bits (and my expensive probe) clear obstacles is becoming tricky, but I don’t want to just move the spindle up on the existing mount.
Thanks again for the input! One of my machines has the 8/12" gantry and it is used to work on some of our non-sheetgood parts, so I’m not concerned from that perspective.
@Eric - I watched all the set up videos and I have a question about the ATC software. Currently the bin and tool # are the same thing. Is there a plan in the future to have this separate? As @djdelorie mentioned, we have our tools and holders marked with a number that never changes. I also have milling machines that are part of our eco system. When we use an 82d countersink, it is tool #22 no matter what machine it is being used on. Our fusion libraries sync and I need the tools to be consistent from one g-code file to the next. Our other ATCs allow any tool # to occupy any position in the tool rack… Is this something we can customize or is the ATC software separate from Centroid and non-customizable?
We used to have Mach 4 running both our router and our milling machine and it had this functionality… I suspect I can always go back to that system, it would just take some code modifications.
Cool. If it’s in the works, I’ll leave it alone. We can work around it for now. At worst, we can use the ATC for our 1-10 tools and manually load the rest. Thank you again for answering all my questions.