Light Machine Corp. Benchman XTr (retrofit)

The anti-rotate pin is exactly that. With the cylindrical shaft on the toolholder, there is significant force on the toolholder during heavy machining and we found that the toolholder could slip inside the drawbar. The addition of the anti-rotate pin addressed this specific issue. It did however make the toolchange procedure more complex as you now have to rotate the pin in and out of the locking position. If you are not doing heavy machining with larger tools (> ≈ 3/16" dia) or machining that requires z-axis slaving, you are probably ok to remove the pin.

Ok thanks! Knowing that, Ill probably go the extra mile and use the clocking pins, I would like to machine with larger than 3/16" dia at times. Thanks for the insight!

Hi there,
My machine is 98% complete, tool changer took the longest. Just wondering what does the 2nd prox going into the spindle to? One is for spindle orientation and the other I can't seem to find information on.

The second sensor monitors the drawbar. We don't want to start the spindle while the drawbar is open.

Hey guys! Wow! There has been a lot going on here since the last time I had time to mess around with my BenchmanXT. My machine is back home and its time for me to get back on it. At this point, I have everything except the spindle indexing connected to the 5i25-7i77. The machine runs on 3 axis, but I could not get the 4th axis to tune properly. If anyone has gotten the tool changer ladder program figured out, I would love to collaborate some to get mine going, too! Glad to see you guys are keeping the dream alive

Hi Mac,
I got mine going thanks to all the info on here. Not sure I did it the best way(I wasted an axis) but I took the servo and encoder from the ATC board, hooked it into the 4th axes controller(which had nothing connected to it) to make it A axis and I remapped m6 with a custom macro to do the tool change. It was all there, the only thing I had to do was add a prox for A axis home. Let me know if you need more info.