Until the arrival of the TC-Digilog Series from Blum, analogue touch probes that measure stylus deflection and do not emit a digital signal were very large, costly and generally found in coordinate measuring machines, the company says. Blum’s TC-Digilog is said to be the world’s first touch probe for robust use in machine tools. Just a few years after its arrival, the evolution and innovation continues and visitors to MACH can see the latest developments for themselves.
Blum has refined probing technology by measuring the start of the shadowing of the light barrier. Blum sensors can detect the percentage increase in the shadowing that occurs when the stylus is deflected ever further. This enables an analogue signal to be generated that greatly extends the range of application of measurement in the machine tool and can also save a great deal of time.
Routed via a mounted base to the Blum D/A converter, the signal is transmitted at 50,000 readings per second with the TC76-Digilog, offering unparalleled precision levels.
AT MACH, Blum will introduce its latest RG 2.0 software that now allows parameters such as waviness, skew or contact area ratio to be recorded for the measured surface, in addition to the calculated roughness values. This system can now be integrated with the Digilog software in machining centre control systems. This now enables customer-specific signal analyses to be performed for route-based measurement. It allows form and surface defects to be logged as well as lengths and angles of the measured surface.
A new Blum touch panel, TP48- 21, said to be ideally suited to retrofits, can now also provide direct display and operation tools. In this case, the operator simply uses a soft-key to switch between the machining program and the Blum user interfaces, enabling them to conveniently define warning and tolerance limits or analyse current measurements. The new software versions run on the Blum IPC48-20 installed in the control cabinet, which are powered by Windows 7 Embedded, and output to the controller via a remote connection. When using a Siemens 840Dsl controller, the powerful CPU can even eliminate the need to use an additional PC when using Digilog applications.
