I have an engraving table which I replace the z axis with a real variable height axis in lieu of the air-driven up/down affair, and it works great for engraving and minor soft materials machining.
But the spindle only accepts 1/8" top-load engraving cutters. A great machine in its own right now, but I need to be able to use other tools.
So I machined mounts and added a 1/4" trim router adjacent to the existing spindle. It's a double headed monster now :-) Can load 1/8" shank tooling, and 1/4" as well. Now I can ostensibly do printed circuit boards and the like. Here's my question...tool and fixture offsets are confusing enough in their own right, but how does one tell the machine to start in a particular job with one head, then continue with the other? For example, I would set my work offsets for the engraving spindle, cut all the traces, then wish to drill using the trim router...Where do I store the "difference" in locations between the 2 heads and switch to it? I should be able to select the other offset for x and y, then drop down and set z as you always would...but aren;t standard offsets relational to machine zero, not some arbitrary difference as I seem to require?
I can field determine their locations easily enough... can somebody explain this? Thanks so much.