I bought my ATC a few months ago and I’ve not set it up yet for 2 reasons
My designs to date don’t warrant multiple toolchanges and are for the most part right now one off productions. If I get to the stage of running multiple copies of something I can see how the ATC will be of benefit.
My machine does multiple sized jobs from 6"x12" plaques to currently a 36"x36"games table, so where to mount the ATC is a dilemma.
The one place on my machine where I have a lot of space is under the spoil board (that’s where my 4th axis Revolution lives.)
My question for all you would be engineers out there is could the spindle be mounted on a bracket driven by a small stepper that could lower the spindle below the table where an ATC could be mounted?
Here I am replying to my own post.
Instead of getting fancy, could we get longer rails and ballscrew for the Z slider (I’m talking 2-3" longer)?
Can anyone see any issues with that?
I think the conventional way to achieve this is to have a pneumatic cylinder move the ATC into position, instead of moving the spindle down further. I’ve seen ATC brackets that move in the Z direction, and some that move in the X/Y direction. I believe Masso supports this, but it would be a decent amount of work to set up.
I agree that pneumatics are a ‘simpler’ solution. I have used these for many projects, and triggered them with sensors along with relays to achieve quite flexible and effective linear motion solutions. Given the small positioning tolerances allowed by the Easy ATC (and most) linear tool racks/magazines, I feel the solution would need to be quite robust and of course highly repeatable.
As for changes to the Z assembly, it will always be limited more by how low you want the lowest point/bracket - which limits table clearance - and how much lower you want to mount your spindle in the moving mount. I would maximize the Z axis rigidity, and come up with a way to get the tools/rack to the spindle.