PC-DMIS Tooling Ball Alignment | PC-DMIS Tech Tips - CMMXYZ

This Tech Tip from CMMXYZ shows you how to use the Tooling Ball Alignment function in PC-DMIS
Hello and welcome to another edition of Tech Tips from cmmxyz.com. Today I'm going to explain how to do a tooling ball alignment. The method I'm going to show you is only going to require a single manual hit per sphere. And the rest of the sphere measurements will be automated. It's actually a lot simpler than you think. To start, we turn on DCC Mode at the beginning of our program. Next, we're going to open up our Auto Sphere. Inside the Auto Sphere, we go to the tab that says Contact Sample Hits Properties and turn Sample Hits to 1, a single Sample Hits inside Auto Sphere means take one manual hit on top of the sphere first, and the rest will be automated. Let's go back to our Contact Graph Properties. I tend to like using five hits for my spheres over two rows, that puts four hits at the equator, one hit on top. Now if you have CAD like I do, you could click on your sphere to populate the central location and the size. Most people will be dealing with spheres that only have a label next to it that identifies XYZ coordinates.
So I'm going to use that as an example. So the numbers I have for my sphere I'll be typing in right now. This will be my first sphere of my alignment. The Diameter. Now most diameters for tuning ball fixtures, if they're metric, will generally be 12 millimeters in size, or if it's an inch ball, will be half an inch, which would be 12.7. The example spheres I have on my table example is 16. So I will type in 16 for my size, and make sure your sphere is set to Outside. Now, when it comes to defining the measurement method, we have to look at our Start and our End Angles. If I click on my View Normal Toggle, that is the top down view. I want to zoom in here, you will see it move around the sphere. This is our Start and End Angle top view perspective. Zero to 0 or 0 to 360 ultimately gives you all the way around the sphere. I want to turn on Circular Moves, so it will arc its way around the sphere. That's an excellent option so I don't crash into the sphere. Turn off the Normal Toggle and click on the View Perpendicular Toggle. This is the side perspective. This is where Start Angle 2 and End Angle 2 gets used.
Normally, I set 0 to go on the equator and 90 to get a point on top when I'm finished. So most of your spheres for tooling balls will start at 0, end at 360 for End Angle 1 and Start Angle 1, and Start Angle and End Angle 2 will be set to 0 and 90. With this being created, and your contact Sample Hit set to 1, I can create this sphere. Turn off that Perpendicular Toggle. Now I want to type in the next sphere. The one advantage of typing all this in in the beginning, every sphere will carry those same parameters forward. So this guy's already set, all my other parameters are set so I can hit Create, then type in the last sphere. As I mentioned earlier, these will be on the fixture. There are my numbers I can hit Create. Close that. So now my program has DCC Mode enabled and my three spheres, which are set to one contact Sample Hit. And now I can do my iterative alignment, Insert Alignment, New and hit my Iterative button. Normally when I'm doing an iterative alignment with spheres, my three for the Level always be are three spheres, hit Select.
My Rotate will be my two longest spheres. In this case, it's a square, most cases you'll encounter a shorter distance between two and a longer distance between one. I always choose the longer distance. In this case it's SPH2 and SPH3. Hit Select. And the Origin will be the one in the middle of the other outside spheres. So in this case, its SPH2 and hit Select. I can hit OK, hit OK. My alignment's complete. Now, the trick comes down to the execution. So when I execute the measurement, PC-DMIS goes to the first sphere and it says Take your hit. This is where you manually take the hit with your joystick.
Once your hit is taken, it will measure the rest. Now the sphere won't be auto moving like you're seeing here. So I also recommend to disable any auto moves inside the sphere or you will get movement errors from the machine. Take your manual hit, the rest are automated, and then you will jog [SP] the joy machine over, take another manual hit, the rest is finished. The alignment is done.
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