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General Mach Discussion / Re: Mach 3 Lathe setting up tools and offsets. hair already gone...teeth next...
« on: December 13, 2012, 03:08:36 AM »I never could figure out why my G52 offsets ended up being ~1.9 inches away from each other per tool, when the tool block is on 1" centers. Never made any sense....
I use G52s with my gang tool holder, but then mine is set up for drills only, so the X offset never changes, and I just manually edit the G-code if the drill lengths change (I have a whiteboard with a corner dedicated to the drill offsets).
As to your offset being off, now you mention it, I think there is actually a bug in the tool change macro.
I noticed that if after doing a tool change where the X offset changed alot with minimal Z movement, the X axis would loose lots of steps/stall. It's like Mach was ignoring the X axis maximum speed, and setting speeds via the Z axis settings.
For example, if the X-axis had to move 80mm and the Y only 10mm, it would move the Y at rapid speed, and X would stall as it was expected to move at speeds far higher than it should.
I worked around it by adding extra lines to the G-code that move the carriage into the approximate place that is needed after the tool change.
I suspect the issue is something in the tool change macro, however I've never had a chance to look into it in any more detail, and given how cold it is outside, I'm taking the "if it's working, it doesn't need fixed" approach!
I am wondering how you are doing things when you say you think its the macro. If using offsets are they all in your code? If they are then I would imagine you have Mach set to Ignore Tool Changes. Is that the case? If it is then the M6start macro will not be used at all. Maybe you have the offsets in your macro instead and have it set to Auto Toolchange?
Hood