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Author Topic: More toolholders than space in the ATC carousel  (Read 7786 times)

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Offline Sweep

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More toolholders than space in the ATC carousel
« on: July 17, 2012, 11:49:27 AM »
I would be suprised if this hasn't been asked before but its difficult to narrow it down in search due to how popular this site is!

I have a Denford Triac with 6 position carousel ATC but have a lot more toolholders than spaces in the ATC.
Can I give each toolholder a number (T1, T2 ...T30 etc) and then assign a seperate slot number in the ATC where it is located, and what would a line of VB look like to represent this, or am I limited to give the slot number the T value?
By having as many T numbers as I have toolholders (30+) will be great as I only need set the offsets and diameters once. If not it would mean setting up each toolholder for every program I ran.

thanks ...Sweep
Re: More toolholders than space in the ATC carousel
« Reply #1 on: July 17, 2012, 03:07:56 PM »
Hi Sweep,
yes this can be done as you described it.
There may be different ways  how to make it.
I would add some DRO's to your screen where you can type in the tool number for a given position of your carousel.
Something like
pos 1 = T25
pos 2 = T7
pos 3 = T1
pos 4 = T10
pos 5 = T12
pos 6 = T30

You can read that from your toolchange macro.

Hope that helps.
Alex

Offline Sweep

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Re: More toolholders than space in the ATC carousel
« Reply #2 on: July 17, 2012, 06:49:18 PM »
Hi Alex,

This is great news, though something i am sure will need a lot more trial amd error as i have never played with vb yet.

thanks ...Sweep
Re: More toolholders than space in the ATC carousel
« Reply #3 on: July 17, 2012, 10:55:13 PM »
Hi Sweep,
if there is already a M6start.m1s macro for the tool changer that should be easy to add.
If you like I try to help.
Alex

Re: More toolholders than space in the ATC carousel
« Reply #4 on: July 18, 2012, 06:59:51 AM »
Keep the tools in rows of 6 and call the tools as t1 - t6, then id the tools with h1 - h999
Re: More toolholders than space in the ATC carousel
« Reply #5 on: July 18, 2012, 07:01:56 AM »
so you'd have h1 - h6 in row 1, and h7 - h12 in row 2
Re: More toolholders than space in the ATC carousel
« Reply #6 on: July 18, 2012, 07:04:19 AM »
not sure if this will play up in cam programs though?
Re: More toolholders than space in the ATC carousel
« Reply #7 on: July 19, 2012, 06:45:30 PM »
ok i looked into this with a friend and he came up with the modulus command, which handles this well in the macro

Offline Hood

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Re: More toolholders than space in the ATC carousel
« Reply #8 on: July 19, 2012, 07:05:53 PM »
ok i looked into this with a friend and he came up with the modulus command, which handles this well in the macro

Lathe is probably a bit different but that is more or less the way I do it. Previously I had just called tool 1 to 12 with differing offsets but after a mention of it on the forum I changed the macro so I could call any tool number and it would  go to the correct slot. This made it better for setting tooltables in DolphinCADCAM as it meant I could potentially set up offsets for  99 tools where as previously I had to either have multiple tool tables in CAM or alter the tools each time I wanted to change a tool in a slot.
Hood
Re: More toolholders than space in the ATC carousel
« Reply #9 on: July 19, 2012, 07:13:23 PM »
it's because of this thread that i looked into it, i previously used the g43h value to set the tools from nine onwards

What a great forum this is.