Hood,
Can you tell me what the wires leading from the CMOSIO CAN bus on your Chiron are for (in the photos they are leading off the encoder module CAN)? I thought that they only connected to more modules, so I was surprised to see a cable coming off it, but no obvious destination. I've got the IP-A on it's way, along with four I/O modules, so I'm starting to map things out and figure out what the possibilities are with these controllers (perhaps beyond what my machine is already set up for). If that CAN connection can be useful for something other than modules, I'd be curious to know.
The tool changer on that Chiron is about the fastest I've seen, particularly because of how fast you have the rapids set up on that thing! It certainly does not look it's age, so great job! I used to have a machine that had two opposing heads, which also had a very fast tool change. In that case, it put the tool in one head, which was upside down and away from the work, while the other head was busy cutting. As soon as the "in use" head finished, the heads flipped over and the new tool was ready to go while the other head got the next tool pre-loaded. It was a bit of a pain to program, since you had to make a tool call for the next tool you will need, not the one you currently need since whatever is in the upside down head is what will cut next. Basically, you had to call for the first two tools before you could even start cutting by doing two consecutive tool changes (T1 and T2 for example). That would get you started with T1 while T2 would be waiting in the other head. When you finally need T2, you had to make a tool change to T3 in order to bring T2 down to work while T1 is replaced with T3 (arbitrary tool numbers of course).
-Mike