Hi guys,

I am making good progress on my cnc and now ready to start polishing up some of the fine details. I am cutting, changing tools automatic measuring the tool lengths but have found a few things that could lead to big issues down the road!

When I run a Gcode Simulation there is a very short trigger of my dust extractor and mister outputs. I have tested without M7 or M8 in the program and there is no triggering on the relays. Any advice as to how to keep this from starting?

Is it possible to lock out a dro so its value cannot be changed by the operator?  At the moment it is very easy for someone to change the current tool number DRO accidently which applies the wrong offset and would cause that tool to crash on top of another when the next tool change is called.
I have a few vb scripts running now and would like to know if it is advisable to avoid calling more Mcodes from within that script. If it is ok is there a limit to the number of Mcodes that can run at one time?

These are all my questions for this morning but I am sure I will have more shortly as I am doing my best to try to find any way that an inexperienced cnc operator can crash this cnc!

There is an option on General Config that disables M Codes whilst code is loading and probably also stops them in simulations.

Only way I know  to lock the DRO in Mill is use a screen designer and place an image button (with no image assigned) over the top of it. It will not let you click on the DRO itself. If you make the Image button and a VB Button you could then have some VB in it to tell you why its not working, something like

MsgBox"Call toolchanges from MDI"

In Turn its easier as there is a DRO that displays the tool number and offset in the form of T0101 or whatever and that can not be written to by entering into the DRO by keyboard.

Hood

Hood

Hi Hood,

Thanks for the fast reply!

I have checked the Ignore Mcalls while loading in General config but still getting a trigger on the outputs. Could I mod the button to run a script to somehow lock out the outputs, then run sim then turn them back on?

Your idea about the clear button is perfect! Never would have come up with that myself! 

I am running Mach3 R3.043.066 with an ESS plugin v10hd2

Another way would be to make your tool number display as a Userlabel  Then push the tool # to the label  . That way if needed you could send an error message to the label as well. 

Just a thought, (;-) TP