### Calibrating a Siemens NEF400 Lathe

Calibration is critical to any system in order to ensure valid measurements are being taken. Without a new calibration scheme, only rough measurements are initially possible.

The mounting of a sphere in the chuck jaws by its stalk is feasible, but on the NEF400 movement of the probe is only possible in the XZ axes and with motion restricted to X>0 where X=0 represents the position at the center of the chuck. Consequently, in order to measure four points around the equator of a sphere, the spindle must be rotated with hits taken only in the X+ direction. This means any offset in the X direction of the probe tip from the origin is erroneously included in the computed probe tip radius.

The solution then is to ensure the hits are taken in the X+ and X- directions to cancel out the probe tip offset, therefore obtaining the correct probe tip radius. To do this, a ring or groove calibration is used instead of the standard sphere calibration.

Previously, the registry setting HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\WAI\PC-DMIS\ProbeCal\ProbeQualRingTool is set to TRUE to enable ring and groove calibration but this is no longer required.

More:

- Calibrating C-Axis Lathes

- - Groove Calibration

  - Vector Calibration

- Basic Lathes

- - Off-Center Sphere Calibration

  - 2D Vector Calibration

- Extended Lathes

- - Ring Calibration

  - - Ring Calibration with 2d Vector Compensation

  - Sphere Calibration

  - - Sphere Calibration with 2d Vector Compensation