- Hello and welcome to
this Haas Tip of the Day. So, many of us know that one of the easiest ways to crash a machine is to goof up on our tool length offsets or maybe our work offset Z values. So, today's tip is all about making sure that doesn't happen, right? We're going to show you how to manually set those tool length offsets and those work offset Z values. So here is the part that
we are setting up, right? You might have seen this part in such critically acclaimed YouTube videos as finding your edge and finding the center of the hole, right? We've got other videos you can see that help you set up the
X and Y work offsets. Again. On this part, our G-54 work offset is a back left corner. On this one, our G-55 work offset is the center of that hole. But in those videos, we never showed you how
to set your Z values. That's what we're going to do right now. I've already loaded up all of the tools for this part and we're going to touch
manually right now. I am navigating to my work offset page and I'm just making sure that there's no values in for my G-54 Z or my G-55 Z. We're starting from scratch here. Now I do have X/Y values, but that's because we've already found our X/Y locations, right? Watch the other videos. Now I'm switching over to look at my tool offset page and all of my tool offsets are blank right now as well. So we're ready to start. I've got my tool one the spindle and I'm going to jog right on top of this left block here. Now why am I touching off on top of this left block? Because my programmer told me to. I've got a set up sheet here that shows the back left corner is my zero and it also tells me to touch off on top of that part. So at this point, I'm
going to show you guys how to touch off with paper. Now there are lots of different methods. We're just going to
show you this one first. With tool one the spindle, I'm going jog down right above the part. Switch it into point zero
zero one jog increment. Then I'm going to jog down with a sheet of paper in between the part and the tool. I'm going to move down slowly, one click at a time, while pulling the paper back and forth. Now as soon as I start to feel this paper drag, I know that the tool is pinching the part and it's were it should be. So I'm going to stop
jogging at this point. I'm going to go to my tool offset page with tool offset one highlighted, I'm going to press the
tool offset measure key. Minus 18.488, that's my machine position. That's what it is using for tool offset. We'll talk about that later. Okay? So I'm going to close my door and I'm going to press next tool. We're going to repeat this process for all of our tools. Now we've actually made
a whole other video on how the next tool button works. So, if you haven't ran
through the next tool function before, watch
the next tool video. This is my second tool. It's a half inch end mill. Again, jog it above the part. Little piece of paper. Once it pinches and stops moving I'm done. Tool offset measure. Next tool. Now you can a little bit better tool touch off. Little bit more accurate if you're on one tenth of a thou increment. For me, if I'm touching off on paper I'm not too worried about perfection. If I wanted to get a better
touch off than paper, I'm going to grab a piece of shim stock This shim right here is four thousandths of an inch thick. I'm gonna take this shim and touch off my tools. I'm going to set it underneath the tool, jog down above it, except this time, I'm going to switch to one
tenth of a thou increment. I'm going to bring it down click by click while moving the shim back and forth until the shim starts to drag. I don't want to pinch my shim. I just want it to drag slightly. At that point, we'll
press tool offset measure. Now with this method, we're not done yet. We've got to subtract the thickness of this shim from our tool offset. So I have to type in minus point zero zero four
and press the enter key to subtract the thickness
of that shim from that tool. Now likewise, there is a whole bunch of different types of touch off tools out there. This is one electronic touch off tool. If this touch off tool was placed on top of my part and I jogged down and then just above the part switched to point zero
zero zero one increment and I bring this thing down until this light turns on, then I press tool offset measure, this touch off tool is two inches thick so I would have to subtract two inches from my tool offset measure value. Okay, so we've gone ahead and touched off all of my tools. I think this job had seven
or eight tools in it. Now what I'd like to do is do a tool change to one of the pointier tools in my carousel. I think tool six is drill. Okay, so I've got mt tools somewhere above my G-54 part. All of my tool offsets are set. I've got tool six in the spindle. Now I'm gonna enter into MDI, G-54, G-0, G-90, X-0, Y-0, G-43, H-6, Z-.1 and then an M-30. So what we've done here is we've just essentially written a G-code program. This is amazing. If you don't know where to start when learning G-code, this is it right here. We're going to use work offset G-54. G-0 just means go really fast, rapid mode. G-90 means make all of
your moves in accordance to the G-54. Now we've got an X/Y value on this line, we want this thing to move right to our X-0 Y-0. The next line say G-43, H-6 Z-.1. These are the scary moves. When you're making a Z move on a machine this is what you really
have to watch, right? And that's why we're checking it before we run the real program. G-43 just means it's going a positive tool length offset. Now this is one of the very few codes I don't explain much on, right? Because we always use a G-43 in combination with our H value. Why H-6? Because I've tool six in the spindle and I want my H value to match my tool value. Now, 99 times out of 100, right or more than that, our H value matches our tool offset. Z-.1 means move to .1 inch in our work coordinate system. Then we end it all with an M-30. Okay. Before running this, we're just going to go ahead and go to our G-54 page and we're going to make sure that our Z value on our
G-54 is set to zero. I'm going to go into MDI, make I am on five percent rapid and I'm going to press single block. After this positions the tool in the X/Y, I'm going to press cycle start again. The tool is going to move down just above the part. I'm going to have my finger on feed hole to make sure I can stop that tool, you know somewhere just above the part. Now my work G-54 position screen says I'm at Z-.39 inches above the part. Does that look reasonable? It does. That could be about .4 inches above the part. At this point, I'm going to change my position screen to distance to go. If I press this cycle start, my Z is going to move minus .29 inches. Is it going to hit anything? Doesn't look like it, so we're pretty safe. So, I'm going to press cycle start. That's it. Our tool ended up the back left corner of this dock. Right where it should've. More importantly, we're sitting about .1 inches above the part visibly, right? We've just verified that our G-54 Z value is set correctly and we also verified that the tool offset, at least for tool six, is set correctly as well. Right now I'm going to put an indicator in the spindle and we're going to set that G-55 Z value. I'm going to jog down
right above our part, pretty close to where
we touched off the tools and I want to jog down till my indicator reads zero. With our indicator resting on top of our part right where we touched off our tools, that's the important part, I'm going to go to my position screen. Then I'm going to move over to our operator column and I'm going to press the origin button. What this did was it zeroed out my Z access operator column. Now you can do the same thing for your X and Y axis as well. We could've pressed X origin and zeroed out the X that way Y origin and zeroed out our Y, but right now we just care about our Z. Now with my operator Z value and my indicator both reading zero I'm going to jog up and out of the way and over above our G-55 part. Once there, I'm going to jog back down until my indicator reads zero zero again. Okay, so my operator Z value now says minus .07 inches. So the top of our G-55 part is 70 thousandths of an inch lower than where we touched off our tools. Our G-54. So, we go to our offset page, go to our G-55 work offset Z column and we enter -.07 enter. So our G-55 Z value should now read -.07 while our G-54 value Z column reads zero because we touched off our tools here there was no offset adjustment needed. I just want to mention that we could've used any type of indicator really. We just zero it out on the point that we touched off our tools. Zero out our operator Z value. Jog up and over to our next vice. In this case, G-55 find out that position. Now we know the distance between our second vice and our touch off point and we enter that in as our work offset Z value. Now, I'm gonna swap out to a pointy drill and we're going to check this G-55 Z work offset. I'm gonna jog down to a safe distance above our part, then we're going to into MDI change that G-54 to a G-55. I'm gonna press single block, five percent rapid. I'm looking at my work position screen and I'm going to press cycle start. So it's moving in the X/Y first right above the hole. Again if you need to learn how to pick up a hole, look at the pick up a hole video. Now I'm going to press cycle start again. And before it gets to close to the part, I'm going to press feed hole. Now my G-55 position says Z.4631. Could that be .4631? Looks pretty good. We'll go ahead and take a look at our distance to go value and it says that my Z distance to go is .3631. So if I press cycle start, it's going to move in the minus direction by .3631. That looks fine, so I'm gonna press cycle start. Now looking at this drill above our part, I can see that my X and my Y are correct and more importantly, we're sitting at .1 inches above the part. We verified that our tool length offsets and our work offset Z values are correct, for both our G-54 part, where we touched off the tools and our G-55 part. Well we've accomplished
what we set out to do. We've shown you how to manually set your tool length offsets. We've shown you how to set those work offsets Z values and most importantly, we've given you two lines of code that you can run in MDI to check your own work, right? Take the time right now, rewind this video, look at those two lines code again. Watch it over and over
until you understand them. Those two lines of code
rest at the heart of G-code. Well, if you got something
out of today's video be sure to share this
video with your friends. Comment, like and most of all, subscribe. You don't want to miss what we've got coming up next. Thanks for letting us be a part of your success and for watching this Haas Tip of the Day.
