I agree it would be beneficial, and Turck and Zoller think so too...RFID
embedded cat40 and hsk holders are already widely adopted from those
manufacturers.
Certainly the scale/size of the toolholder is a challenging point. Even
with some of the microdot 125khz tags (about 6mm diameter, 5mm thick) I
doubt I would be successful retrofitting my hsk32 holders, and then the
balance would be affected to a degree.
Laser engraving a compact QR code (20 characters as a serial number would
likely be more than plenty for quite a while) should work on most if not
all steel holders, should shrink to about 6mm square (given above content
restriction) and cause minimal balance issues. Manufacturers already
engrave their holder components so the standard is set. Optical reading
might be a failure point in a machine (coolant) environment, but confidence
should be higher if an air blast assist was available.
After your barcode reader (could be on machine, at tool loading station, or
even at the spindle) reads the data, just a matter of cross-referencing
some database to pull in the most recent data for that tool and holder combo.
I wish I had this already! (Just loaded 12 tools and about to run them
through length probing on the Mazak.....)
Ted.
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