Presetter Guide
Introduction of Presetter
Presetter, which is also called tool presetter or tool presetter system, is a kind of measurement device which is designed to determine tool offsets at the machine.
The purpose of introducing the tool presetter is saving time at the machining center. By the time it passes, this device has proved that it has done pretty well on its position.
The prefix “pre-” means “goes first” or “before”. However, the tool “pre”setter is not actually work before the machining progression. If it is necessary to find the definition of “before” on the tool presetter, it would be “measuring before use” instead of “before the machining progression start.”
In some concepts, people think that the name presetter is not correct enough to describe this measuring device because the tool measurement progression is actually done during the machining progression.
It is sure that there are still other methods to take a measurement of the tool offsets, for example, using feeler gages and test cuts. However, after the tool presetters are introduced, they have been the major because of their features of efficiency and accuracy.
Works with Tool Presetter
Tool presetter is useful, but not every kind of manufacturer would need it. If the productivity or the factory scale is not large enough to require a high productivity, the tool presetter would not help in large. Instead, sometimes it might even cause extra spending on the total working time.
Another kind of factory that does not need to introduce presetter is the factory that makes the machine tools do the same tasks every day. It is because this kind of machining progression does not require tool switching. The only situation the tool changing would be requested is when the tool gets worn.
On the contrary, if the factory can be recognized as a manufacturer with large scale and work with machining centers which gives high productivity and various works, the application of presetter would be necessary.
Tool presetters can work while the machining progression is going on. It is because that not all tools in the machining center would work at the same time. When the tool inspection and presetting progress is applied on one of the tools, others can be used as well on the machining center.
There are few advantages that tool presetting would bring.
● Accuracy
Tool presetter is basically worked by computer programs that it would hardly make mistakes on the measuring results.
In the era of Industry 4.0, the tool presetter contains optical measuring devices which are more accurate than the physical contact (or indicator) devices used in the past.
The tool presetter nowadays contains the ability to keep the repeatable measuring accuracy of 5 microns or better.
● Repeatability
More than a function of measuring accuracy, it can be recognized as thermal stability.
Presetters that use multiple material types would be more likely to encounter the problem of non-uniform thermal expansion while in the machining center. For the purpose of solving this problem, repeated calibrations to output repeatable measurements would be necessary.
● Capacity
The capacity is important that the manufacturers would need to check how many tools they would use and the capacity of the machine tool to pick up a proper one.
● Ease to Use
This can be considered the most important point about choosing to use the tools or not. If the product is good but not easy to use, it would not attract anyone to purchase.
The other reason that this feature would be considered important is that an easy-to-use device would deduct the time the operator needs to be familiar with it. It would help a lot on time and cost saving.
Importance of Tool Presetting
It has been ensured that tool presetting can highly reduce the duration of manufacturing since switching tools is actually the most time-spending motion that the machining center would do.
Tool presetting helps in sustaining and supporting efficient machining processes by providing tool data to the programs in CNC systems.
Another important thing to do while doing tool presetting is tool inspection which ensures improved tolerancing capability and the maximum of producing time.
It is always important that the dimensions, length, angles and cutting edge radius would influence the accuracy of CNC products.
The function of tool management can help to check all the conditions and then provide a broad range of in-house functions which can efficiently increase the accuracy of the CNC system.
Doing tool presetting can increase the productivity performance during the same working time because this progression can be done while the CNC machine is working.
That is, other tools can be used and continue the working progression while one of the tools is preset. This is the reason why too presetting can help to reduce the total duration of CNC machining production.
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