Speedy alignment: General Industry Coverage

When loading a toolholder into a machine tool spindle with an automatic toolchanger, misalignment of the ATC gripper to the spindle can damage the spindle taper. In addition, a misaligned, clamped toolholder increases cutting tool runout.

Machine tool builders align the spindle to the gripper using a plug gage that fits though holes in the V-groove, or ATC, plug and the taper plug. But they have difficulties when the plugs are out of alignment because they don’t know which direction to move the gage to correct the misalignment, according to Jack Burley, vice president of sales and engineering for BIG Kaiser Precision Tooling Inc. “There’s a lot of trial and error,” he said.

Courtesy of BIG Kaiser Precision Tooling

The ATC alignment tool from BIG Kaiser aligns a machine tool’s spindle and the ATC gripper.

To translate the direction in which the ATC arm is off and make adjustments without guessing the direction, BIG Daishowa Seiki Co. Ltd., Osaka, Japan, developed an ATC alignment tool, which BIG Kaiser supplies, to directly make adjustments according to a 10µm/div. dial indicator reading. In other words, the alignment tool’s dial indicator instructs a user which direction to rotate the 20mm shaft (AL plug) in order to align the taper plug (AL shank) and the ATC plug (AL flange).

The alignment tool has a stylus that determines the high and low values when the AL plug is slowly rotated.