Insert Tooling, What do you think?

[Mark Bolton]

Yes, spacers have magnets and just stack between the clamping plate on the spindle and the bristle plate. The max you can stack is 2 before the magnets start to reach their limit. Drawback on our atc is factory, you can't run any extensions with the atc because the hex bolts holding the forks will hit the bristle plate on a tool change. We did away with the hex bolts and counter bored for flat head cap screws so we can run one extension all the time. With the iso 30 holders anything but the shortest bits (1.5" cutting depth) will leave the bristles off the work leaving a lot of missed pickup. With a large fly cutter surfacing slabs or working up off the spoil board the pickup will be awful for any shoe. Running the two spacers in those situations will get 90% of the chips. The single is fine everywhere else. We run none when running short bits. Kind of a pain but without the expense of an articulated shoe or enclosed spindle you do what you have to do.

[James Biddle]

Huh, I never knew SS had spacers available for the shoe. I did have one for my Kent shoe on my Camaster and it worked pretty well. Are you changing the spacers after tool changes or just picking the best combo for a job and leaving it that way for all the bits? I have a phone call to make today. Thanks.

[Mark Bolton]

Huh, I never knew SS had spacers available for the shoe. I did have one for my Kent shoe on my Camaster and it worked pretty well. Are you changing the spacers after tool changes or just picking the best combo for a job and leaving it that way for all the bits? I have a phone call to make today. Thanks.

I ordered the spacers direct from Kent. It seems they made a special shoe for SS. They asked me to take a photo of the label inside the shoe. There is a little paper label stuck to the inside of the plastic adapter that your DC hose connects to. They made me two spacers from that number.

And yes, we typically leave one spacer on all the time now other than for very short bits but depending on your setup like I say you have to be carefull because our forks on the ATC were attached with hex head bolts where the hex is above the fork. There is very little clearance between the under side of the bristle shoe and those bolt heads so you cant run ANY extension period with those bolts in place if your doing ATC tool changes. Like I say, we removed the hex bolts and countersunk the forks and replaced the bolts with flat head caps screws which allows us to run one extension all the time.

I have yet to make a part but I cant run the spacer with short bits because I have some thin PVC screwed to the inside of the bristles at the DC port because we have a 3HP cyclone picking up the CNC that is right next to it and I ran 5" hose and reduced it right at the spindle to get max suction. Well that much DC sucks the bristles right up into the port leaving the front end of the shoe wide open which is worse than less suction. The plastic strips remedy that but with short bits (less than an inch) the plastic strips will hit the work and knock the bristle plate loose. We play around with eliminating the thin plastic, and reducing DC suction but its better for us when the DC is pulling all the air it can.

We really only use the second spacer with the large fly cutter or when we are running 2" long or longer tools. But anything longer than 2" no amount of shoe is going to help.

[Peter Rawlings]

Mark, I wonder if the bolt head interference isn't something they've modified in production. On the machine I just got, the tool forks are stepped down where they attach to crossbar, which leaves the heads in plane with the top surface of fork. Looks like I may have a phone call to make also.

[Mark Bolton]

They may well have changed up the tool rack. I have seen a recent one. Our machine is couple years old. You can tell how much room youll have by just taking your bristle plate off and hitting your Estop or stopping the machine in wincnc when the spindle drops to pickup/drop off a tool. You'll be able to look under there and see how much room you have for a spacer.