Probing a new WCS location with respect to an old one

[PatBrower]

I am machining a part as shown in the image below (only 1 instance of stock is shown, but I actually run 4 pieces at a time). I have previously had the WCS origin located on the corner of the stock as shown. This allows me to have only 1 setup in cam with Multiple WCS selected. I can have as many pieces of stock held in the machine as I wish, all with their own WCS. When I want to update the program, I only have to update the one setup and it will apply to all WCS locations. The only drawback to this is that I must probe each new stock location by hand in the machine.

The other method Would be to move the WCS to a known point in the machine and use the "Override Driving WCS" function , which would allow me to use the cam driven probing to find each stock location, as long as it is modeled in my cam correctly, and set the new WCS. The main drawback here is that each new WCS will need to have it's own setup in the cam as they are located in different locations with respect to the driving WCS.  This means that If I have 4 pieces of stock in the machine, I will need to have 4 different cam setups for each ( setup for g55 location,  setup for G56 location, ECT.) This becomes annoying when I want to make a quick change to the program and now have to make the update within each setup.

Is there a way to drive the probe based on a known point WCS  (Such as the one in the picture above), but set a new WCS in a different location such as the corner of the stock?

I am trying to find a way to still have only one NC setup using the "multiple wcs" functionality, but also be able to drive the probe to automatically set each new wcs.

Thanks for any suggestions, Hopefully this makes sense as it was difficult to explain.

[a.laasW8M6T]

Hi

You cant drive with one offset and set another location that is different, but you can instead of having multiple setups with a different WCS put each instance of the probing into a folder and override the WCS in the folder.

So the setup uses G54,

The Folder uses G55

The WCS override uses G54 to update G55

If you have all the Stock locations Modelled, rather than using Fixed size box etc. in Fusion and they are located accurately in your work holding model then you can use this method to probe each stock location. use a new folder for each stock location

Then you can run the one setup with multiple WCS and you don't need to  update multiple setups when you want to make a change

[PatBrower]

Thanks for the reply.

I am confused as in my understanding, the process you just described would cause the program to machine in the same spot 4 different times.

If i had each stock location modeled perfectly to reality, when I Probe the first stock location, it will set g55 exactly to g54 since the stock was exactly where the programmed model was. The next piece of stock at the g56 location would be probed and g56 would be set equal to g54 as well, since the stock was exactly where it was modeled with respect to the wcs selected and so on. I would end up with g54-g58 offsets all being the same value.

Now the one setup with multiple wsc selected is programmed to the stock position modeled in the g55 and that location only. So when it switches to g56, there will be no change in the offsets and the machine will machine in the same location as the g55 location.

I am probably wrong on this, but i want to understand how it works.

[a.laasW8M6T]

Hi

Yes you are correct, I've gotten that wrong

Its annoying that its so hard to get this to work, what we need is like a checkbox for "set probe location as 0" or similar.

I can do this with manual programming quite easily but you really want it all to happen in Fusion.

I'll think on it a bit more, there may still be a workaround in Fusion

[a.laasW8M6T]

I've thought a bit more on it and cannot come up with a way of doing this in Fusion

Your observations in your initial post pretty much cover the problem.

you either need to manually probe each stock locations or have a different setup for each stock location.

Quite annoying really isn't it☹️

[programming2C78B · Accepted solution]

You can always just find the difference between the locations and insert a passthrough that adds the offset to the probed g54 and puts it into g55, etc. 

[PatBrower]

Ah, I think that would work great. Thanks for the idea!

[PatBrower]

Ha bummer, Thanks for your time in considering this!