What are live tools?

The live tool is simply an end mill within the lathe component. Without the live tooling, in order to get flats and holes on your parts, you’d have to do all the turning steps, remove the part from the lathe, and enter that into the mill.

What is a live tool holder?

Live tools are dynamic tools that drive a cutting tool (endmill, threadmill, drill, tap) that is secured with a collet or other coupling on the live tool spindle. They are mounted to a turret and are actuated by the CNC control spindle.

What is live spindle?

(Mach.) the revolving spindle of a machine tool; the spindle of the headstock of a turning lathe.

What is a 5 axis CNC machine?

5-axis machining refers to the use of a computer numerical control (CNC) to simultaneously move cutting tools or parts along five axes. The cutting tool continuously moves along every axis so that the tip is always perpendicular to the part. This process allows you to machine a variety of complicated parts.

What is CNC live tooling?

Live Tooling, as the name implies, is specifically driven by the CNC control and the turret of various spindle and powered sub-spindle configurations on CNC lathes to perform various operations while the workpiece remains in orientation to the main spindle.

What is work offset?

Work offsets are data registers in the CNC control that hold the distance from the machine home X, Y, Z position to the part datum. These offsets can be thought of like a table on the control: Figure 3: Work Offsets. The X and Y values represent the distance from the machine home to part datum XY.

What is HMC and VMC?

CNC machining centers describe a wide range of machine tools including CNC milling and drilling machines, which include vertical machining centers (VMC), horizontal machining centers (HMC) as well as 4th and 5th axis machines. Most include automatic tool changers from 20 to over 500 tools.

What is multipoint cutting tool?

MULTIPOINT CUTTING TOOLS ARE A SERIES OF SINGLE-POINT CUTTING TOOLS MOUNTED IN OR INTEGRAL WITH A HOLDER OR BODY AND OPERATED IN SUCH A MANNER THAT ALL THE TEETH OR CUTTING EDGES FOLLOW ESSENTIALLY THE SAME PATH ACROSS THE WORKPIECE.

What is a live tool lathe?

What do you need to know about live tooling?

Live Tooling, as the name implies, is specifically driven by the CNC control and the turret of various spindle and powered sub-spindle configurations on CNC lathes to perform various operations while the workpiece remains in orientation to the main spindle.

What’s the difference between a live tool and a static tool?

These devices, whether BMT or VDI, are also called driven tools, as opposed to the static tools used during turning operations. Live tools are usually customized for the particular machine tool builder’s turret assembly.

Which is the best live lathe machining tool?

Heimatec offers the widest range of Live Tools in the industry. Heimatec’s standard and custom Angle Heads are designed and manufactured to handle the most difficult applications. ER collet output and adapter system all built into the same tool. Available for live and static lathe tools as well as machining center angle heads.

When to use quick change or live tooling?

Standard live tooling is most often best suited to production work where finish, tolerances and cutter life are critical, while quick-change systems may be better suited to the shop that produces families of products and other instances where offline tool presetting is a key factor in keeping the shop at maximum productivity.