Creating ATC carrousel from scratch (documented with CAD models)

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! 

Here is my next update of a complete parametrical design of a toolchanger, upon change of the toplevel assembly variables, you should be able to create a toolchanger from 6 to 120 tools on disc. You can play around with the variables, distance between toolholders, ratio genevawheel and disc, etc, basically this is a base design ( standing model) for anyone who wants an easy to machine toolchanger. in case of hanging design, geneva wheel and toolchange disc should be inversed. This could be easily done by first creating the amount of pockets you need parametrical and than save the seperate bodies and make small manual changes so the bearing fits again in the plate.

Next update will be, making the driving wheel independant of the geneva wheel so simulations can be done, but that is for the next update.
After that i will add the stepper motors to be used, taken into consideration the size of the wheel and its weight, to show a proportionate stepper with sufficient torque to drive this easily.

I hope i can help some people out in saving them a lot of design time. using easily available parts, and easy to machine parts.

Needed: Solidworks 2020

 
 

 

Hey all,


I am currently finishing the whole toolchanher with dust cover and automatic opening of the protective case. Fully parametric BUT I see that as of know the probe basic GUI only goes to 24 tools. Could someone with good knowledge of this update the GUI with options up to 36 or more tools. This way anyone who wants to create a toolchanger could use the design I made ( Geneva drive) with all components to buy described and as cheap as possible with the amount of tools as wanted. I think this would be a nice upgrade to linuxCNC as a whole.