I'll give that MDI a try today.
I have 80 parts to run so it will have plenty of opportunity to show up.

Ok guys I found out that the M codes controles a relay and the switch DOES NOT.
I opened my cabinet and played with the MDI trying to fined the relay and noticed this!

I think I’ve found a design flaw in the wiring.
I’m too busy today to go into detail and my
kid has a ballgame this afternoon.

I’ll go into detail tomorrow afternoon.

Chris   

I may have found what is causing this.
The Tormach has a control panel with
a bank of rocker switches one of the
switches turns the power ON/OFF to the
PC. this switch is fed 110V straight from
a 110V outlet. The coolant pump switch
has three positions NO/OFF/AUTO.

When you select the NO position it gets
it’s power from a jumper that comes off
the back of the PC switch to manually
turn on the coolant pump.

When you select the auto position
the power for the pump comes from
a circuit board that has a rely that
switches the power ON/OFF when
M codes are used.

I think when you manually turn the
pump ON&OFF it is doing something
funky to the PC’s supplied power an
causing these strange problems.

I can do one of 2 things,1 run the pump
it’ on power wire or 2 put the PC on a serge
protector.

What would you do?

Chris
       

i'd run the pump from it's own supply , seperate from the pc if you can
it sounds more like a noise problem or the pc supply being switch mode probably can't handle the spikes and surge when the coolant motor starts up , hence the slight hickup . so seperating out the supply will help
 

Dave   

On the machines I have retrofitted I have always used Solid State Relays to switch things on and off. I have never encountered any noise problems or strange glitches this way. I have however sorted out a few problems where snubbers and diodes have cured noise problems on other machines and retrofits. I have even used the SSR to control large contactors without any snubbers without problems.

YMMV

Bill

Ok guys it happened again!

I haven't touched the coolant switch this time.

It adds .05 to all my tool offsets and the part is junk.

I checked the tool offsets and all the math works out.

It's leaving my part .05 short and the offset is .05 long.

I haven't had time to do any thing about this other than
not messing with the coolant switch.

I have about 250 more parts to run before I can shut down
and make any changes.

What is adding .05 to your tool offset?  Are your tool offsets changing buy .05 every time you hit the cycle start button?

Brett

What is adding .05 to your tool offset?  Are your tool offsets changing buy .05 every time you hit the cycle start button?

Brett

To be honest with you I wish I knew. 

I know that my parts are coming out .05 to short and when I check to verify that my tool offsets are correct they appear to be .05 to short.

I use a .375 dowel to roll under my tools when I am setting them up on the offsets page.  You can select any tool number that you like, put that tool in the spindle and touch off on the dowel and your pogram coordinates for that tool should be .375.  And when it was taking .05 off the part and I would check it the program coordinates would be .425.  I thought .05 was kind of odd being that it was such a round number. 

Okay guys.  Just got back from Office Depot.  I purchased a new keyboard and a surge protector.  We had an issue one time where you try to click on an icon and it would highlight about half of the icons on the desktop.  We found some debris under some of the keys.  We blew the keyboard out and haven't had this problem since but I was thinking maybe the keyboard had some debris under it causing these tool offset problems.  I've also noticed that when I switch the coolant pump from auto to on this problem would occur from time to time.  So I get back with my new stuff, set the machine up again and run the program with no tools then I put a tool in the spindle, selected that tool number and brought it down to the part and checked to see if the offset height was still incorrect.  It was off by .031 this time. 

I normally use a .375 dowel to roll under my tools to set them up.  I put this number in my touch correction on the offsets page and turn it on. 

I've been setting up tools this way for seven or eight months and everything works fine.  Then all of a sudden this thing has a mind of its own.  If you guys could think of anything that I could do to cure this, please let me know. 

Thanks for your time!
Chris