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Tool Setting Microscope
The essential piece of equipment for setting offsets is a tool setting microscope. One is available for Emco lathes and it can be adapted for use with other lathes if it is remounted on a magnetic base. It is clamped to the lathe bed between the chuck and the carriage with its cross hairs aligned with the lathe axes. Because the image of a tool tip is inverted, slacken the microscope tube locking screw and rotate the tube so that, when looking through the eye-piece, the +Z characters are on the left and the +X characters are at the top (some Emco microscopes do not have these characters).
To focus the microscope, move the right hand tool, set at centre height, under the microscope tube. With its clamping screw slackened, move the microscope tube up or down until the image of the tool tip is sharp. Tighten the screw.
The Set the Tool Offsets option guides you, step by step, through the offset measuring process and shows you how the tool should appear when viewed through the microscope. WELturn automatically calculates and records the offset values: you do not have to enter any figures.
Tool offset setting always begins with the right hand tool. WELturn will not let you do otherwise. The right hand tool is the datum for all offset measurements.
If the right hand tool is changed in any way, eg fitted with a new tip, removed from and replaced in its tool post holder, the offsets of ALL the tools MUST be remeasured. If any other tool is changed in any way, only its offsets must be remeasured after first re-establishing the datum with the right hand tool.
The Emco tool setting microscope is quite expensive (around £240 in July 2001). If you look at the WELsoft web site, www.welsoft.co.uk you will find a recipe for a low cost but very effective DIY alternative. If you use this alternative microscope, you must use the viewed tool images shown on the web site and not the ones shown in WELturn when measuring tool offsets. Otherwise, the measuring process is the same.
Clean Down at Manual Tool Change
Set the Tool Offsets
Tool Tip Radius Compensation