Creating ATC carrousel from scratch (documented with CAD models)

Hello Everyone,

It has been a year or 3 since I needed to change my machine, I've reading on the forum and so it seems linuxCNC has again evolved a lot since then. Congrats and thanks to all developers!!!

I was finally able to buy an ATC spindle and thus I have to rewire and extend my machine. First steps are of course the CAD designs of spindle and carousel, and open source wouldn't be open source if people didn't share their work, so please follow along this thread to find all parametrical cad designs I will draw to build your own carousel. I will upload them as I go along in the design. (Solidworks and .step format)

Of course I will be having some questions of my own, I have looked into the probe basic GUI and that looks awesome. For the moment I thus only have 1 question, how much pockets can the GUI of probe basic handle. I saw in most screenshots a 12 tool carrousel but I would like to build a little bigger. Up to 36 tools. Can probe basic screen show this graphically or is there a certain max of toolholders for the graphics screen? I looked to the documentation and forum but couldn't find an answer to this. Hopefully someone knows this?.

While reading through the forum past days, I think I could conclude that a stepper/Geneva drive would be best suited to keep the implementation as simple as possible. Am I correct in my assumption? As this will determine the type of design I will.make and share for others

After the designs i will step by step update how I build the entire ATC, so anybody else in need can follow this as a tutorial as I didn't find any complete tutorial to build and ATC with cad designs on the forum. I will try to do my best and try to keep a standard as high as the pro's around here.

Happy milling everyone!!!!!!

 

Thanks a lot for these 2 threads, I have read through them but still couldn't find the answers to the maximum amount of toolholders the Probe Basic GUI can display. Could anyone using Probe Basic have a look once to see in the setup what the maximum amount of pockets is that Probe Basic can display? Thanks

Not sure there is a limit. Its just that you might need to create another graphic or two. I vaguely remember some discussion about this.
I would also look at qt-dragon which gives you a similar feature set and very good documentation in the V2.9 docs

I have gotten the answer through GitHub. As for now the following is supported:
[ATC]# Carousel image available for 8, 10, 12, 14, 16, 18, 20, 21, 24POCKETS = 12STEP_TIME = 500

So I will design accordingly. Thanks all for the help so far.

Marcodi wrote:

While reading through the forum past days, I think I could conclude that a stepper/Geneva drive would be best suited to keep the implementation as simple as possible. Am I correct in my assumption? As this will determine the type of design I will.make and share for others


 

Tommy & Rod have covered the bases, but I'll add a couple thoughts.

You can, of course, use any mechanism you'd like.  But the standard macros/subroutines that come with Probe Basic are designed around:

Geneva-drive carousel
On/off rotational motor control ('dumb' DC or AC motor) using two relays or similar
Pneumatic actuator/slide for carousel in/out
basic on/off power drawbar
1 sensor with a per-pocket trigger
1 sensor with a once-per-rev trigger

All the logic & sequencing you need are in the built-in macros.  Of course, multiple values inside the subroutines and LCNC variable table will need adjusting depending on your IO numbers, pocket count, and similar.

If you would like to use a different mechanism, there are a couple of working examples on the forum.  GuiHue has posted an excellent configuration using a step & direction motor with a reducer for a router-type machine.

You can buy an existing one and make reverse engineering. if you need your own. For 400€ you can have a one like this,  allegrolokalnie.pl/oferta/automatyczny-m...i-cnc-hurco-bmc40-fv
I am not the seller. 

But align everything mechanically to your mill is a lot o work. and time, better to buy an old milling machine a align everything electrillay only

cheers

 

Thanks for the ideas, but in this case i want to make it myself, nothing better than made-at-home, otherwise, where is all the fun

I will update this post until the entire carrousel is designed, but in the meantime, i will share the intermediate files. So as of now, i have designed the base shaft and the base disc. This is already quite parametrical, except for the shaft, that has to be sturdy enough to support no matter what toolchanger. I want to keep the cost of production as low as possible, so for the shaft we need a 60mm steel rod that will have to be machined and the discs are made up of 10mm aluminium plate ( everyone can machine this themselves) and a standard 150mm x 5mm aluminium tube ( which can be bought.

Design in solidworks 2020!