Hello,

I just got a P1A-S pendant from Vista CNC for Christmas. So far I really like it. I have one issue I want to clear up though.

When I'm running a program and it asks for a tool change I want to use the pendant to set my tool offset manually. Unfortunately the pendant's MPG is disabled once I hit Cycle Start. Is there a way to enable it during tool changes?

Thanks,


Chris

I'd suggest you e-mail VistaCNC.  Lee there is very helpful and responsive, and he can tell you exactly why it does that, and if it can be un-done.

Regards,
Ray L.

Hi Ray,

I emailed Lee yesterday, unfortunately it's a holiday weekend and I haven't heard back from him. I thought I'd ask here thinking that maybe there's a setting in Mach that controls this feature.

Thanks,


Chris

Just thinking out loud but during a tool change you should not be under Cycle start. The Gcode program should have stopped. Once stopped the pendant should work until you restart the program with CycleStart.

HOW are you stopping for the tool change ??

Just a thought, (;-)

Right now I have a M6 followed by a T#. I agree that it should be available. Maybe I just need to add a bit of code into the tool change routine.

In GenConfig are you set as a manual TC or auto TC ?

(;-) TP

I believe it's set up as manual. The machine holds at each tool and tells me which tool to swap to and waits until I hit cycle start again.

I got an email back from Lee. He had the pendant disabled during runtime so he modified his code to allow use during tool changes. I tried out the updated plugin and the mpg function works during tool changes now.


Chris