Hi,
I'll try to address your comments here. Please see the information below.
By the way, the main MSM support forums are here:
http://www/CalypsoVentures.com/forumsFor future questions you will get a faster response by posting questions there.
i experience some problem with your screen.
i use a canadian french computer. So, the default marker for digit is "," instead of ".".
When i edit the tool table, the numeric value in the pop up window use ",". To be able to save my entry, i have to change them all to "."
and i have to do it each time.
I think you have to modify your code to take care of this isue.
I would love to be able to make MSM follow the various regional settings for numbers and currency. Unfortunately, this problem is not in MSM, it is in Mach. Much of MSM is written in the cypress basic language that mach uses for scripts. Unfortunately neither Cypress basic or Mach itself support internationalization settings. I asked about this for mach 3 and was told by Artsoft that mach3 was never going to be updated to support anything other than US English settings.
The best I could do was to document this in the MSM release notes. The only regional settings MSM supprots are those that Mach 3 supports and that is only US English settings. Please see teh MSM release notes, section 4 (Known Errata in Mach3), item # 53.
Other thing.
When i probe a pocket or a edge, is not alway to zero it. Often it's because i want to mesure it in reference with another feature. So i propose to add a button to tell mach that i want to zero or not.
This one I can help you with. There is a button called "probe only". It is in the lower left corner of the panels that have the green arrow probing operation buttons. Whenever this button is on, MSM will not tell mach to reset zero to the probe point.
I think this is exactly you are asking for. See section 8.6.3.1 of the MSM user manual.
Other thing,
My probe dont have any possible adjustment. Si the probe is alway off center. To take care of this, i mill a round pocket on my mill table. This pocket is at a know location in the machine reference system. So when i put the prob in, i mesure the center of this pocket. The mesured position of the pocket minus the theorical mesurement of the pocket give me the actual offset of the probe. This way, when i probe a part, i just have to remove the value calculated to know the real position of the part.
To take care of this, i propose to:
-add two value in the screen to enter the real position of the pocket.
-Add a new button in the probing page to mesure the center of this pocket for probe refference purpose.
-Then, each time i probe a part in a specific direction, take care of the compensation for the probe offset.
This type of problem is why I recommend that people use probes that can be adjusted.
However, I am also thinking about what you have described.
It seems to me that the process you have described is maybe not sufficient to resolve the errors from a probe that does not have a centered tip. It also seems to only address probes along the X and Y axis.
It seems that the results you are getting are dependent on the diameter of the cylinder that you are boring and using for compensation. I'm thinking of two circles, on inside the other, with their circumferences tangent at one point only. This is what we have for the probe you described. The "compensation amount" is not only a function of the direction of the probe movement relative to the (offset from center) probe tip, it is also dependent on the relative diameters of the cylinder and the probe tip.
At least Part of this error can not be removed (without using having a physically impossible zero diameter probe tip).
This gets complex quickly and is one reason that the probing routines in MSM are oriented toward increasing productivity of job setups. Most job setup operations only require probes along a single axis, and in those cases it is good enough to assume that the surface that touches the probe tip is perpendicular to the direction of the probe movement.
A probe whose tip is not concentric will create additional error.
Since probes that have concentric adjustments start at about $120. It seems that the most economic way to remove this error is to get a better probe tool. (the reality is that the effort to implement what you describe is much more than $120 of man power time).
Dave
Over all, this screen is amasing.
Thanks.
I'll take that as a compliment. :-)
Dave