I'm extremely lucky that I live just a few miles away from Z-Bot LLC, the company that makes the ATC's for our Tormach mills. From time to time I drop by, and I get to see previews of new products that are in development. Most of the time I have to keep quiet about them, but I've got permission to talk about this one.
Disclaimer: I am not an owner or employee of Z-Bot, but I have done some contract work for them in the past, making various small components. I don't stand to profit from this product, other than possibly being given one to beta test.
Z-Bot is making a programmable coolant system for our mills. Actually, it's for any mill that runs Mach3.
The prototype that I saw was as you'd expect, a little rough looking. There were circuit boards and tangles of cables and components mounted in project boxes. This is normal for a first model. First you make it and see if it works. Then you focus on making it pretty. This product definitely works.
I expect that the Tormach version will have a bracket to mount the unit to the mill head. The prototype was mounted to the head by a magnetic base, and it worked just fine. The generic version will probably just come with a mag base, so it can quickly be mounted on whatever mill the customer has.
This is a standalone unit that plugs into a spare USB port. The system is designed to work with the Tormach ATC, but an ATC is not necessary. All you need is a USB port. And the unit is small enough that it would even fit on an X2 mini-mill.
To set it up, you perform an initial calibration by aiming the coolant at two tools of differing length. After that is done, every time you perform a tool change, the software reads the tool length offset, and uses that number to calculate the aim point for the coolant. When a tool change happens, the nozzle adjusts its aim to target the new tool.
I've used a similar system on a Haas mill, and the Z-Bot system is actually smarter. The Haas system has separate tool table fields for the coolant angle, which the operator must set up. With the Z-Bot system, if your tool offset is correct, the coolant will be on target.
A nice side effect of that is, if the coolant is not hitting the tool on target, you know that your tool offset is incorrect. It will give you a chance to hit the E-stop before you break something.
The prototype was set up with a single nozzle. I'm told that the final control box will support two nozzles, one mounted to the right side of the head, and one on the front. Two streams of coolant at 90 degree angles will be very useful for clearing chips on deep slotting cuts.
There is also a second mode where the nozzles follow the workpiece as the head moves up and down. This will be especially useful for deep hole drilling, when you want the coolant to stay aimed at the top of the drilled hole, not at the tip of the drill bit.
You can set both nozzles on the tool, or both on the work, or one in each mode.
Lastly, there's a table sweep mode, where the nozzle rapidly changes angle to sweep chips away from a large area. For a large pocket, this could help clear chips. And when combined with a Y axis move, it can be used to clean chips away from a finished part.
I don't have any info on pricing at this time, nor do I have an ETA. But I am hoping to beta test one in the next few months.
Cheers,
Frederic