Startup & Initial Setup (0:00-1:24)
0:05-1:25: “Hello. Hello, I’m Chris, and this is Mason. Welcome back to another training video. Uh, we just finished off the last video, which was how to set up and cut apart on the horizontal work table. In this video specifically, we’re just gonna go through all this steps and, and procedures of setting up and cutting apart on the vertical workstations. Um, regardless if it’s the vertical workstation that’s on the y axis, or if it’s the one that goes along the turning channel, um, along the X axis, uh, the, the same applications are gonna apply when it comes to mounting and setting up x, y, z zero and simply running your part. Okay. So let’s show you first Mason, how to mount a part in this vertical workstation. So that’s a, that’s a key thing, right? Mm-hmm. Um, because we’ll need to do that in order to set up our xr y and RZ zero like we did in the previous video. Uh, so here, uh, you’re gonna have this vertical plate, uh, it’s gonna have a, a bunch of holes in here that allows us to fixture components to this, right? So the first thing is these pre-drilled and tapped holes, those are quarter 20 threads, and that has a two inch by two inch spacing between those hole patterns. And so we have a couple of fences that we provide, uh, for, for our customers with the machines mm-hmm. That match those same hole patterns.”
Mounting the Part (1:24-3:05)
1:23-3:07: “That match those same hole patterns. So two inch, two inch spacing. So I could create technically a vertical fence mounted directly to that plate. Mm-hmm. And now I can put the part up against that fence, so it’s the same location every single time. Right? Um, same here with, this was called a pivot fence. Um, this is a four inch spacing between the actual slot and the, and the pivot hole. But that can go here and we can technically, um, mount that at any angle or degree, and we can position this at that Mitre angle and then machine that part on whatever surface we wish. Right. Okay. Um, so that’s the basic fences that come with it. Right Now there’s also these, um, long aluminum fences that are available for customers to get, um, if they, uh, if they actually get the vertical vice. Right now they’re including this long fence as of just recently. Mm-hmm. Okay. So this is a new thing that’s been added as a default, um, or should we say that’s included with this Y-axis vertical, uh, vertical plate is this long fence. Now, this long fence, uh, it does two things. It’s, it’s used to hold parts vertically, right. So we can go to the same spot every single time. Mm-hmm. Uh, but this also has a secondary hole pattern, just like here in the vertical plate. It has these five eights just through holes, and that allows us to attach these, they’re almost like welding clamps, but I call ’em pin clamps or, or dog bone clamps. Mm-hmm. And so they just pop right into those holes, and then I can apply a clamping force parallel to the plate that it’s on. Okay. Okay. So I can apply that there, or I can put it even out here on the aluminum fence and I can press things up against that, that vice.”
Tool Setup & Work Offset (3:05-5:30)
3:04-5:01: “and I can press things up against that, that vice. Okay. So we can take this part And if you just shift this forward a little bit, you can just twist that in there and that makes contact, we can do the same thing with the second one, and then you just snug those up and we have a part now ready to be machined. All right. Okay. So pretty straightforward, really simple, using these types of clamps with the straight aluminum fence. However, not every customer has this. Mm-hmm. You do. Since you’re learning this right now, you have access to this, but not every customer has this at this time. So let’s show a secondary method to hold a part in place so that they can start machining on again, the ends or edges of your, of your components. All right. So with this one, we’ll bring, take these clamps off. Okay. Now, before this was, uh, created and added, added to our product line as an accessory, um, the quarter 20 threaded hole patterns is what we would use to attach other clamps. So here we have another third party clamp. This one is called the RA in incre toe clamp. Actually, they called it the build it clamp on the RA’s website. Mm-hmm. Uh, but these are like 12 bucks, pretty cheap made out of aluminum. So by chance your cutter hits hits them a little more forgiving under tooling. Yeah. Okay. Not too bad. Um, but this works great for mounting parts vertically as well to that, uh, to that fence. And so what we’re gonna do is it comes with this quarter 20 hex head bolt. I’m just gonna flip it upside down. Mm-hmm. And put the knob on first with the hex head on the top, and then we’re gonna go through the clamp down through the top, and then I can just manually thread that directly into that fence. Mm-hmm. Or should we Yeah, this acts as a fence.”
5:04-5:13: “Okay. And I usually make sure it goes all the way through so I have full thread contact. We can repeat that twice with the second Clamp on this side.”
5:16-5:31: “Actually, I’m gonna show just some variation here. I’m gonna shift one clamp to the left, just one hole pattern. Mm-hmm. And I’ll be able to show you why I do cer certain things like that. Okay. So that’s make contact all the way through. Okay.”
Tool Loading & Setup (5:30-8:00)
5:29-5:34: “Okay. So that’s make contact all the way through. Okay. So now when we drop our part in here,”
5:38-6:48: “We can put this clamp in place and just tighten that knob. Yeah, same thing here. Put it on top of that part and tighten that knob. Okay. So this shows why I, I kind of put the whole pattern over one for one clamp, so it spreads out my clamping force across the width of my part versus all just being on one side of the blank. Mm-hmm. Um, it tends to make that a little bit more secure during the machining process. So that’s the, the other method. And you can use these toe clamps with the bait, with the, uh, basic fences that come with the machine versus with the aluminum fence here. And so that’s, that’s another option that you can do as a third party clamp that you’d have to, um, have to invest in. Whereas, uh, again now you can either get this accessory for the lung fence or um, it comes included with this vertical device with current machines. Mm-hmm. And so they’ll actually have these clamping systems built right in so they can start clamping parts right to their machine Right. When they, right when they receive it. Okay. Perfect. Awesome. Okay. So, um, those are the two methods. So let’s switch back just to what’s the default today? Mm-hmm. Just back to those clamps real quick. Just wanted to show you some variations here of what customers can do based on what they have.”
6:54-8:00: “And we will just unthread those bolts, take them out real quick and then we’ll reclamp this part vertically here. Okay. Okay. Now, based on this Part Mason, where do you, or where would you choose to make XY zero personal preference? There’s really no wrong answer ’cause you can choose anywhere. But where would you choose XY zero based on this? Probably right here in the corner. Okay. So you’re, you’re saying that’s the, from the front of the machine, that’s the bottom right corner? Mm-hmm. Why did you choose that corner? Because it’s the, the stablest place, it’s up against both, uh, stable X or, uh, the fence edges, right? Yeah, the fence edges. So these are the based on the fixture, this right side of the part is not gonna move ’cause the aluminum mm-hmm. And it’s going against the bottom edge is not gonna move either. So this corner is static. That’s right. Mm-hmm. It is not moving. Okay. It is staying still. Uh, so yeah.”
Final Setup & Machining (8:00-11:30)
7:55-11:30: “It is not moving. Okay. It is staying still. Uh, so yeah. So if you chose to make the XY zero, what’s the advantage of doing that in the long run? Well, if you have any other part, as long as you don’t change the angle of this, your XY zero is gonna stay the same. That’s right. So if I have a thicker component or a wider part, I can use the exact same fixture to accommodate all different parts sizes. Um, because we made XY zero in the corner, you know, where everything goes to the same position every single time. You’re exactly right. Awesome. Okay. So that’s x, y, zero say is the bottom right corner. Mm-hmm. And we can go make sure our software is set up correctly to match that. Uh, but where would we place our Z zero for this? Hmm. It would probably have to be on the top. Agreed. The bottom’s way low and so mm-hmm. We would need to make the top surface our Z zero. However, in certain situations, kind of like this, it can be a little tricky or even precarious to try to balance or hold a pad on there as we’re trying to touch it off, right? Mm-hmm. So to make that a little safer, um, I’ll show you one, one method is just referencing a surface that we already know. Mm-hmm. And so if you grab another blank or straight edge, we’ll just loosen up this part one more time and if we bring this part over and then bring the part up until it touches that and then lock it in place. Mm-hmm. Where can I place my smart tool pad now? Directly on the bed? Yeah. Because the top of this part is the same height as my table surface, so we can just place that right there. And that’s a lot easier to work with when setting up our Z zero. A lot more stable. Exactly. Exactly right. So, uh, easy trick is just using a, uh, surface as a reference. And there you go. That’s all it takes. Beautiful. Perfect. Okay, so we’ve now decided where we want XY zero to be based on our fixture. Um, we’re gonna make the bottom right corner XY zero and the top of the part, which is also the surface of our table here, those are gonna be our Z zero plane. Um, and now we’re ready to technically have our program ready. We can finish the whole setup procedures of actual cutting this part. All right. Okay. So let’s go bring up our job sheet and our operations checklist. Uh, so we know the steps to take and it’s gonna be the exact same steps that we took in the horizontal table. Um, it’s just now applying them to the vertical, but we’ll have a different job sheet that gives us slightly different information for the tooling and X, y, Z zero positions. All right. Sound good? Sounds good. So now that we have our job sheet and our checklist ready, we can perform a mortis cut on the ends of our parts here. And we’ve already talked about where we want x, Y, Z zero to be mm-hmm. Based on that location. So let’s now go through the checklist and again, reference the job setup sheet so we know what the correct information is to use in order to set up your tooling, your X, Y, Z zero, all of that information. Uh, so that when we run this, everything is gonna turn out just dandy. Alright. Okay. So what’s the first step here on our checklist? Okay, so the first step here on the checklist is securely mount the blank on the vertical workstation, which we have already done. Yes. So that’s good. Now we click on the vertical workstation screen. So from the horizontal table we go to the vertical table, then select and name a work offset, which we already have right here. Yeah. And just as a recap, it always selects the top of those five listed there, right? Mm-hmm. So the top one’s already selected and there’s nothing wrong with just using the default”
Post-Machining Adjustments (11:30-25:00)
11:28-12:13: “and there’s nothing wrong with just using the default that it chooses for us, which is fine. Okay. And then we check the MTC tools ready or load the A TC tools in the clip positions. So it seems we don’t have anything in the spindle or on the racks. So let’s put in our quarter inch N mill. Yeah. Right there on the job sheet. The quarter inch n mill needs to be assigned to which tool number? Tool number two. Awesome. Okay, let’s do it. So now we can go back. Yes. We can load it into the rack here. Make sure it’s nice and parallel. Not that way. Okay. And then boom. Very good. All right.”
12:19-13:14: “Okay, so with that done, we need to make sure the vacuum table is off. Okay. So we go into here into control. We note that vacuum is off. Yes. Okay. Now we need to locate the work offset and set it. So to do that we’ll use the laser finder. Okay. Edge finder. We’ll go back into our tool and say come here to MTCX. Okay. And because there is no tool in the CL rack right now, all I have to do is hit room tool and then clamp. All right. Tool number 12 is just fine. Okay. That it is very good. Now that we have all of that, we can scoot this over probably with this.”
13:18-13:56: “Sure. Bring it kind of close to where you need to. Yep. Set up your XY zero. Beautiful. And then plug it in. Okay. Now with that all ends started, we’ll go down here. Yep, exactly. Match your keyboard to the orientation of the front of the machine. That’ll make things a lot easier. Now you’re welcome. If you need to stand here, feel free to do so. Whatever you’d like to do, make yourself comfy. Okay. Okay. Now that we’ve gotten pretty close, let’s go into step jog mode and we’re in 10 thousandths. Okay?”
14:01-15:08: “Sure. Got just little bit. That should be split and right about the center there. So now all we have to do is Z zero Y zero. Perfect. Okay, so you’ve now set your XY zero, which is the work offset using an edge finder. All right. Now we want to set the Z zero. We can’t do that with the laser, so we’re gonna unplug mm-hmm. Move that out of the way. Okay. And then we’re gonna have say, Hey, come back here. Not that it really needs to, but back in the tool release then clamp. Yeah, you can always clamp, even if there’s not a tool in the spindle, there’s nothing wrong with that. You can see it, it signs it as tool zero. Mm-hmm. In the spindle itself. Okay. Then we want to tell it, hey, pick up tool number two, which is the tool that we put in. Okay. And then pick it up.”
15:26-15:33: “All right. You wanna bring it up here to to C next”
15:37-16:12: “And then just plop it. We’re still in step jug. Yeah. Turn that off. Move over just a little bit. And then thanks to our pre-planning of aligning it with the table. Yep. All we have to do is put that down right there on a nice and stable flat surface. That’s right. Then we go to smart tool, multiple tools and then make sure that lines up just a little off there. Yep. Aim for that bullseye. That’s exactly right.”
16:21-16:52: “Okay. And now securely in there. Then we hit continue. Very good. Okay. Okay. So we just, after this is done, we’ve checked off that, that uh, process as well. So you’ve now successfully, uh, set up your cutters. You set x, Y, and Z zero now. Uh, so we only got a few more steps and we’re ready to actually start cutting. All right. Wait for this to do.”
16:56-17:16: “Excellent. Alright, so now our next step is to turn off rapid Z or set up rapid Z, which we’re not using. So being sure that is correct. So that is, that is turned off. That is, that’s turned off there. Now we need to load our toolpaths. So you can go into program open and that’ll open up the file folder.”
17:21-20:25: “Okay. Then we go into our drive G code and our mortis G code right there. Okay. And now then second to last step is to make sure that our tools line up and we see right here tool number two n mill quarter inch. Perfect. Perfect. So that’s all set up. Yes. Now you’ve uh, again, you’ve double checked yourself not just to the job sheet but also to the G code. Mm-hmm. Uh, ’cause you never know if you accidentally got misinformation or misread the job sheet and you’re also double checking yourself on tooling and your G code, right? Yep. Makes it so you can catch any of those errors that you may have accidentally done. So, alright, our tools are all set up based on our G code line. All right. And then the next step is to hit play. Yes. Lemme grab some, oh, safety goggles and we’ll continue in just a second. All right. So now that we’ve got some safety goggles, all that’s left is to hit play. Yep. All right. Okay. And what’s the three expectations the machine should do when we push that play button? All right. It should check to see if the right tool is in the spindle. Yes. Which in this case it already is. Yes. Then it will touch off that smart tool uhhuh. After that it’ll go to XY zero and start up the spindle. That’s exactly right. So let’s make sure it does those three things. There’s two and there’s the third. Went right to that corner. Looks beautiful. Alright, Excellent. Alright. Okay. So let’s move the spindle all the way. We can either do that manually or safe, X, Y, z. Easy. A simple way of, yep. Moving. There we go. S Now before we take this part out, um, because a machine that you know perfectly did exactly what it was told to do, um, machining, IM mortis here on the end of our part. Mm-hmm. What I want to cover now is just a cool little tip that you can use in technically all of your work offsets. Uh, it could be done for your horizontal table, your vertical or your turning center is after you cut something, you can measure it with a set of calipers and see if everything is exactly where it needs to be relative to the part. Okay? Mm-hmm. Because you never know when you were setting up that XY zero with that laser or you off by, you know, ten five 1000th of an inch based on how good everyone’s eyes are. It’s gonna be a little different. Now there are more accurate edge finding tools that you can use other than a laser. Um, so you can be a little more precise. Uh, but let’s, let’s do some measurements, see how close you are and then show you how to fine tune our work offset position by adjusting the X and Y by just again, the perfect amount so that the next time we would cut this, it would turn out perfect. All right? Okay. Alright. So what we’re gonna need to do first is simply mark the face that we wanna keep track of. So I’m just gonna mark this uh, front face here saying that’s the face that’s towards us. Mm-hmm. So if we take it out of the machine, I can keep track again where everything was located for XY zero. So now we can remove this.”
20:33-20:39: “Okay. And we have our mortis. Alright, that’s great. Okay, so let’s grab a set of calipers. I got some right here.”
20:44-24:59: “So let’s measure this to see how good we were along the width and along the uh, length as well. So if we measure one wall and I’m measuring the wall that’s in direction of positive X mm-hmm. Right? That was up against that fence. Or should we say the aluminum plate and that came out to be 0.187, right? And then this one on the other side that’s closest to you Mason, that’s 0.188. So this is literally perfect on the X axis. Alright. One thousands difference. There’s not much we can do to change that. You’re gonna have deflection of your material and different things. There’s not much we we can do to improve that. That is spot on. Let’s see about the X axis. So I know that if the mark here indicates again the negative X. So this is gonna be my negative Y on this side and that edge will be my positive Y, right? So my negative Y that is 0.502 and over here this is 0.525. Okay, so we’re got about just a little bit off, not much, but just a little bit. So if we were to take those numbers, which is 0.502 and 0.525 mm-hmm what’s the difference between those two? So we take the big number minus the smaller number, gives us the difference, right? And that would be two three. That is correct. Let’s do it on a calculator right here on the controller and we can just work this out. So if we go here to our calculator, so if we took the big number of 0.525 and you minus 0.502, you’re gonna be spot on Mason, it’s 0.023, right? So 23 thousandths is how much we are off on the Y axis. Mm-hmm. Correct. Now because there’s two sides, when we adjust one side, it’s gonna adjust the other as well, right? Mm-hmm. So we need to divide that by two. So what’s half of 23 thousands? Alright, that would be, where’s the there it’s right there divided by two bam. Okay. Oh 1 1 5. That’s right. So we need to adjust it roughly 11 or 12 thousandths of an inch in a direction to correct the Y axis, right? Mm-hmm. Now this machine allows us right now to move it in the third decimal so we can move one 1000th of an inch at a time, not a 10th of 1000th, right? So now, so I guess the question is which direction do we need to correct the Y zero? Do we need to shift it towards the positive side or towards the negative side? All right, so the small side was on the right? Yeah, the small side was on negative Y. Okay. So the big side was on positive Y. Okay, so we need to move it positive point 11 or 0.0 11. That’s right. So let’s do this. Let’s tell the machine to go to XY zero of this offset that you had set up. Alright? So yeah, go right there to the controller, click on The offset XY zero button just like you did. That will move it right to where it needs to be. We can see that the dros, you can see the dros read zero, right? Mm-hmm. So now we can do step jog and go one thousandths at a time or you can actually type in one thousandths or 11 thousandths really is another way. Oh, uh yep. Delete and 0.11 or one two, either one works right? We’ll probably whatever you prefer, we’ll go 12, we’ll round up. Okay. 12,000. So now if you push enter, that’s now the increment step that you’re gonna be moving the machine. Mm-hmm. Right? So if we now move this in the positive y axis direction, just using your manual controls, boom. Yes, it just moved over that amount and you can now re zero that axis, which is the y axis. So now we’ve corrected the difference of making sure that part is perfectly centered with what’s taking place with the mortis. Alright? Alright. Okay. So that’s a cool little tip is we can always fine tune our work offsets to make sure our parts turn out exactly how they need to be. And this is a really key process specifically for joinery. Mm-hmm. Right? When things have to be perfectly dead center. Um, so everything lines up.”
Conclusion (25:00-26:00)
25:00-25:42: “Um, it’s, it’s no fun when things are off, things start flexing and it’s not fun to assemble projects when things aren’t lining up how they should be. So that is a cool process. Uh, right now we have actually gone through everything you need to know about how to set up and run the vertical workstation. All right? As you saw, it’s identical to setting up on the horizontal workstation, the exact same steps. Yeah. Um, it’s just that here we just added another concept of how to adjust your work offset and we mount a little bit differently using different types of clamps. Mm-hmm. Right. You got any questions for me on how to use that workstation? Uh, no. It’s pretty simple. Okay, sweet. And we’ll move on to the next video, um, which is the turning center, how to run apart on the Turning Center. Yes. We’ll see you guys in the next one.”
