Moving on to tooling. Tooling is an area of the highest frequency of errors that might occur in the machining process. You have diameter and length associated with each and every tool, and sometimes you’ve got a complex part with 20-30 tools, and everything has to be perfect.  Remember back to that slide that about 99.9 percent right can still have a significant impact if that 0.1 percent is wrong. Something that we have done here for our customers, and that many of our customers also do on their own, is the use of Balluff sensors.

Balluff is the company that produces, markets and sells the sensors, but we use these sensors to eliminate errors. On my slide there is a picture along the bottom showing where a read/write chip is actually embedded into the tool or the machine. This chip is read when the tool goes into the machine, and it can be read as the tool comes out of the machine, always updating information regarding the cutter that’s being used in that particular tool order. 

This can be used very effectively to eliminate errors because it can take away the manual operation of inputting data regarding tool lengths. That is probably the best example of where there is a chance for error. Everything’s done digitally or electronically through these sensors. It’s a very effective means. We have also used Balluff Sensors as a part detect on fixtures to make sure the process is ready to go. 

My next slide is talking about the application of a Balluff Sensor to automate the uploading or downloading of tooling information to the machine tool to eliminate errors. It is a wonderful example of eliminating errors because it is eliminating a manual data input and the risks associated with a manual data input process. It leaves no chance for error. 

In the top right corner of the screen is a tool pre-setter. Prior to the tools being used you’ve got to put the tool data into your CNC control, such as the diameter and length, so that the machine knows where the tip of that tool is. You're going to do that either on the machine, which takes cycle time or production time away from the machine, or you can do it off the machine on a tool presetter, which is usually what we recommend because it’s overall a more efficient method.

The tool presetter is where you're going to measure your tool length and diameter of the tool and what can be done with the Balluff Sensor process once the tool presetter establishes the lengths, it can be connected electronically by cable to a PC. With the data in the computer, it can be easily uploaded to the machine tool through an Ethernet connection or RS232 connection. Basically, you're loading your tool data without any manual data input, so you can imagine how reliable and error proof that kind of process would be. And to do that, you're sensing that the data on that tool through the read/write chip that we looked at on the previous slide.

The other way that this can be applied is with a Balluff Tool Cart. The Balluff Tool Cart can be used to transport tools from machine to machine in your shop. Sitting on top of the Balluff Tool Cart is a sensor, and this sensor is reading the chip on the tool holder that we already talked about. What’s really clever and effective about this process is that as you take tool orders from one machine to another, you put it in the Balluff Tool Cart, you read the read/write chip on the tool holder, and that Balluff sensor can read the data, put it into the computer, and you can transfer tool data from one machine to the next using these sensors. Again, you eliminate any manual input of data and eliminate a significant amount of errors.  To take this just one step further, if you have a group of machines in a cell that are all controlled by a common point of control, which I’m showing my slide where it says, ‘Cell controller,’ the Balluff sensing system can be used again to upload all tool data by tool to the cell controller. The cell controller in our case at Makino, with our module NMC pilot management system, then would be the central point of control to keep all the latest tool data as read by these sensors and deliver to the appropriate machine as the tools are used in the different machines within the cell. You can do a whole lot of data transfer with no manual input and that’s the beauty of this whole system.