5-axis 1 min di lettura
Tool Center Point Control (TCPC): The 60-Second Explainer
Why a 5-axis mill needs TCPC, what it actually compensates for, and how Kinetic Control handles it under the hood.
If you are moving from 3-axis to 5-axis machining, "TCPC" is the term you will meet first — and the one that is least often explained well. Here is the 60-second version.
The problem
Picture a 5 mm end-mill held at 30 degrees off vertical, cutting along the side of a curved pocket. Now imagine the rotary axes nudge the tool to 35 degrees mid-feed. Without compensation, the tip of the cutter — the bit that actually contacts the material — moves several millimetres relative to your toolpath.
What TCPC does
Tool Center Point Control tells the machine: keep the tip on the programmed path, no matter what the rotary axes are doing. The control re-solves the kinematics every interpolation slice, calculating the linear-axis offset needed to hold the tool tip exactly on the curve.
Why it matters for the V2-50
On a Pocket NC V2-50, the A and B carriers are short-armed — small rotary moves translate to small but measurable tip displacement. TCPC ensures your CAM-posted G-code runs the path you actually drew, even when the rotaries are sweeping through their range.
Where it lives
Kinetic Control implements TCPC at the motion-planner level. There is nothing to enable in the operator UI — when your CAM software outputs a tool-axis vector along the path (Fusion 360, SprutCAM, HSMWorks all do), Kinetic Control automatically applies TCPC.
Deeper dive in the Kinetic Control wiki → Tutorials → Tool axis and TCPC.
