Creating Mill-Turn Coolant Strategies

In Mastercam 2024, all Mill-Turn users can access the Coolant Strategy Editor. Previously, this utility was only available to licensed Developers. Use the Coolant Strategy Editor to create, edit, or delete the coolant strategies that are stored in your Mill-Turn .machine file.

Coolant strategies organize individual coolant on/off events into complete sequences. You select coolant strategies in the Sync Manager:

Coolant strategies are different from coolant options. For example, your machine might have three different coolant options:

• Flood coolant

• Through-tool coolant

• High-pressure coolant

Coolant strategies organize the on/off commands for one or more coolant options. For example, you might create a coolant strategy that turns on flood and through-tool coolant before the approach move, and turns both off before the retract move. You can then create a different strategy for high-pressure coolant, etc.

Follow these steps to open the Coolant Strategy Editor:

1. Open the .machine file in Code Expert.

2. If necessary, open the Machine Explorer panel by clicking Machine Explorer on the View ribbon.

3. Double-click the Consumer layer.

4. Select Output Settings from the Category list.

5. Open the Coolant group.

6. Click the Open coolant strategy editor button.

Working with the Coolant Strategy Editor

Each column in the Coolant Strategy Editor represents an individual coolant strategy. The rows represent different nodes in the approach or retract sequence where coolant options can be turned on or off. Build coolant strategies by adding coolant events to the proper row.

• Click the Strategy Name or Strategy Description to rename a strategy or edit its description. The Strategy Description will be visible to users as a tool tip when they select coolant strategies.

• You can create different strategies for physical tool changes and null tool changes. The Physical rows are used for physical tool changes and the Reposition rows are used for null tool changes.

• Double-click a cell to add or edit the coolant events.

  

  • Select a coolant option to activate it, then choose the desired On/Off event.

  • Deselect an option to remove it.

  • You can add as many different options in each cell as you wish.

  • Click on the column header to drag and reorder the columns. This also changes the order in which strategies are presented to the user in the Sync Manager.

• Make sure that each coolant option that is turned on in the strategy is also turned off later in the same strategy. The Off strategy is only used when users wish to force all coolant options off. Otherwise, each strategy should explicitly turn off each option that is turned on.