basic stuff

[Ralph Barrier]

New CMM and PC Dmis user with no background in QC. Went from shop running Mazak CNC Lathes and Machining Center to drafting, purchasing and job routing to where I'm at now (can you tell we are a small company) We are trying to move from the ice age to the 21st century in a couple of months. Had the basic class, but it took me almost 2 weeks before I could set down and try my hand at this. That's my background in a nutshell. I'm going to have some real basic questions for awhile, bear with me. Thanks for any help.

These planes are confusing me somewhat. In our class we touched top of demo part and said we were in Z+ plane. If I set probe to A90B180 to measure bore in front of part, would that be Y- plane? A90B0 to measure bore at the rear. Would that be Y+? When I was measuring a shaft setting in Y axis on CMM, I was told to measure top half of shaft to get diameters in the Y+ plane. Would this be because of measuring from Y origin on front of shaft?

Also I’m having some trouble bring in a solid. I have SolidWorks. Save my solid as .IGS file. Can bring it in ok, but the axis are different than CMM’s. I do a Edit - Preference - Setup. I changed the axis in part setup to match my CMM. I hit apply but nothing happens. Could I get a quick review of how I can bring in a model and set the axis and planes. I had this in the basic class, but only now am I ready to use it. My notes were good back then, but can’t understand my writing now.

[Matthew D. Hoedeman]

The +/- direction of the planes are interchangable EXCEPT when doing an alignment. If you can 'SEE' what you are measuring from the y- or y+ direction, you need to be in that plane, which basically means that all your touches will be in either the Z or X directions. If you can 'see' the feature from the X axis, then you need the X+/- workplane with all touches being in the Y or Z direction, etc.

When you change the CAD to MACHINE axis, you will NOT see any change on the screen. However, when you move the machine, if you look at the CTRL-W window, you will see the axis now moving to match the 'new' directions (if you made X the Y, then when you move the joystick in the X direction, the Y numbers will change).

[John Kingston]

Very good question for someone stating they don't understand this (yet!). The workplane relates to your vectors (ijk). When you measured and aligned the top of the block its vector became (i=0,j=0,k=1) . This created the Zplus workplane. If your block was setup in a manner allowing you to probe the bottom or opposite face, its vector would be (i=0,j=0,k=-1). This would be the Zminus workplane. So, you seem to have a grasp of it. Remember X,Y,Z,i,j,k . You X axis is your i vector and so on.

I can't help with the cad issue. Others here will though.

Most importantly, welcome aboard. There are a large number of people here that can help you. You will sometimes get more than one method of doing things. There is not one correct method for anything. Also, be prepared for a strange sense of humor and camradarie here. QC and CMM programmers are a one of a kind breed.

[Underspec]

Congratz Ralph. As long as you know some gd&t, the x-y-z coordinate system, and something about computers you should be fine. No one here is 100% knowledgable in PCDMIS.

[kbotta]

Welcome aboard!

[J. Pick]

Have a look here for a little help understanding coordinate planes. http://www.geomet-cmm-software.com/KB10010.htm. This forum will likely be one of your greatest resources for information - there are a lot of knowledgeable people here willing to help.

[Wes Cisco]

all questions welcome

There are many helpful folks here and response is usually quick. As to the cylinder and y+, I suspect that if you look in the alignment you will see that z+ was leveled to the cylinder, so now the machine z axis has become the "active" y axis. If that confused you more, try this: The machine x,y,z can be reassigned in an alignment in anyway that does not change thier relationship to one another. In other words x+ in relationship to y- will always be the same but whether z+ in your alignment points up,down,left,right,front, or back is entirely up to you.
One other thing that may help you is to use the search function of this board. You can often find your own answers to basic questions as quickly as you could post them and get answers back. There have been recent threads about how to get the cad axis to match the actual part alignment on the table. This is (IMHO) one of pc-dmis's biggest weakspots. When you import the IGS file you can click the "make cad 3d" button. You then have to drag a box around the entire model and create a level. You can then go thru some arcane manipulations and hopefully eventually get the trihedron rotated as you want. I do not get the priviledge of CAD files all that often. Others report seem to get the desired result with the method you tried and if you can get it work, it seems easier. HTH

[John Kingston]

There are many helpful folks here and response is usually quick.

Wes makes a good point here. Less than 25 minutes and 6 responses.

[John Riggins]

Welcome Ralph.

Do you race that Pony?

John

[Bill **********]

Just remember, "The only stupid question is the one that goes unasked." We've all been there. Welcome aboard.

Bill

[JamesMannes]

Welcome to the Jungle!!!
Many people have a lot of helpful files that can be uploaded here. Just start asking questions and whenever relevent an example or helpful document will probably be forwarded through the forum.

[TRD_racing]

Welcome Ralph,

I have learn alot from these sites. I am only an hour up the road from you. If you need any help you can email me. I can email you my phone numbers if you need them.

[Ralph Barrier]

Ya"ll are good. What a quick reply. I'm not used to that.

As for the Pony, my dad has one, and if he every gets out of the gardening buisness, I would love to restore it like the one in the picture.

Thanks a bunch.

[Lee Johnson]

Welcome to the bottom of the funnel You already have a better understanding than most of us when we first started out. What version software are you using. seems they have changed some things in doing alignments in 4.0 the latest version