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General Mach Discussion / Re: Side mount tool changer controlled by Mach3? Has anybody done it?
« on: June 20, 2016, 05:44:49 AM »The problem with doing this in Mach 3, is how do you track the tools, and how do you store the information when things get shut down.
As mentioned above User DROs for each tool slot could be used to keep track of the tool number in each slot and if Persistent DROs is chosen then these would be written to the xml on shut down.
This would require the arm changing twice and waiting for the magazine to turn in between. Would be a whole lot slower but probably easier to get up and running.Not required as far as I can see, just the movement upwards to put the new tool in the spindle and the old tool in the slot would have to wait for the changer to revolve to the old tools slot. So basically a tool is called, the changer moves to new tool slot, arm picks it and old tool then lowers, changer revolves to old tool slot and arm raises and puts old tool in slot and new in spindle.
As said though, if decent at VB random toolchange should be relatively easy, sadly I am not good at VB but if it was my machine I would get it working, would just take a lot of syntax errors on the way
Hood