At the Manufacturing & Engineering North East event, held earlier this month at the Metro Radio Arena in Newcastle, Chester Machine Tools (www.chestermachinetools.com) was giving live demonstrations of a probe for tool setting and tool-breakage on one of its V6L vertical machining centres.

This machine has a work envelope of 600 x 400 x 450mm, a 750 x 400mm table, a 10kW BT40 10,000rev/min spindle and 48m/min rapids.

Fitted as standard is an arm-type tool changer (20 tools); an armless type (12 tools) is available as an option.

The probe being demonstrated was a Blum ZXSpeed universal 3-D type. This features wear-free opto-electronic signa generation that offers precise non-lobing switching and constant deflection forces.

Moreover, there is a choice of transmission technologies, including hardwired, infra-red, BRC radio and DUP-Mode (the sequential use of two infra-red measuring systems with one receiver).

Chester’s range of CNC machining centres can now be specified with Blum products at extra cost (www.blum-novotest.com/en.html).