Who wrote the probing routines for the Tormach PCNC1100?

[gumbyrulesyou]

OK - I'm having a little trouble with these routines, particularly the "Destroy Probe" setting, which is activated by showing "machine coordinates" and attempting a "Set Tool Length" probe. Somehow, the behavior changes if the DRO is set either to machine or work coordinates. In machine mode, the tool goes down, touches the setter, pauses, then goes down another inch or so, ignoring the probe and smashing it....except in my case, because I was using a wooden dowel and had my hand on the E-stop.  Other times it probes UP. yes, UP. I touch the setter, it pauses, then does an upwards retract of 0.1 or whatever. Then there's a whole thing with the tool setter height, work offset, etc. Seems pretty complicated, which is where I see some numbers getting swapped around. I'm not going to go in to the button script and rip it up just yet, but for this project, I just want to keep the setter in one place, fixtured to the machine. As long as the offsets of the tools are all correct in respect to each other, and you load one tool and set it's length right, and zero it off the part, then for every other tool you load and probe, it shouldn't matter WHAT the sensor height is, or what the current work coordinate is.  I dunno. I don't get it, except that I don't trust the machine and the setter, and I don't really want to put the setter on the work, since, well then it's not fixed, and what if I set a zero to the material top then carve it all away. I know I should set it to the bottom, but sometimes it just makes sense.  I just need a tool setter routine that I can jog over to the setter position, change the tool, and press "GO" and it plops a number in to the tool table. After all, when I measure with a height gauge on a granite plate, I don't have any reference to the thickness of the TTS tool holder measuring block, or the workpiece zero or any of that, it's just a Z height offset for the tool, and as long as that number is 1.000 different for a tool that's 1" longer, that's all that matters.  Can somebody let me in on whatever secret there is?

Sorry... i'm just really frustrated right now.

Andy

[spunk]

Don't know what is wrong

But i've had the same thing happen to me... one time probe upwards, the other time probe downwards... same code, same button script...

[gumbyrulesyou]

Well I went in and screwed around with the script a bit, and tried probing with G91 - I don't know if this is a good idea, but at least the tool moves in the correct direction now, instead of trying to rapid in to the bed ..The script appears to call the current Z work coordinate in to account when it moves, and the setter height, and does some arithmetic before it records the tool length. The parameter it returns, '2002' is the Z height in work coordinates. I think there are 6 points that a G31 returns - 2000-2005, corresponding to X,Y,Z,A,B,C in current work coordinates. Where can I get values for the MACHINE coordinates??  Also, the tormach code is sorta commented, but lots of those OEMDROs need to be reverse looked up to find out what they are, and also in the tormach code, it comments the parameter 2002 as "z machine coosys" which it does NOT return data in the machine coordinate system, it's work coordinates. Frustrating, but maybe whoever wrote the code thought that it was machine coordinates and thats why it's screwy. Also, I'm using a smooth stepper - When I probe G31 while in machine coordinates, the machine probes with ALL THREE AXES moving, even though I might only specify one axis. Is this smooth stepper or Mach?

[zarzul]

are you typing a g31 Z-1,

Show us some code maybe we can round up some help.

[M250cnc]

When i first got my probe i broke the tip in no time.

This was all to do with the offsets, i posted about this with the comment that you should have a G49 to reset the offset before the probe routine runs.

So i suggest you set up with a tool zero and reference your other tool offsets from that.

Currently i am drilling a lot of holes, the face of the drill chuck is tool 0 then tool 1 is a centre drill which has a 23mm offset etc

Also check out this thread about offsets and soft limits http://www.machsupport.com/forum/index.php/topic,13956.0.html

Phil