Master Tool Mode Turning Off Mid Job MAYBE

[cherokee140d]

Hi Dave

Possibly this ties in with a prevoius thread about unexpected tool offset shift.

Happened again today, mid program. X appears to have suddenly gone minus by approx .4". That is "Co-incidentally" the offset of the master tool!. When I switched to the tooling page the green Master Tool light was out. Fortunately, I had my finger on the stop button and was using a part off tool. Managed to halt things before it bent too much.
Is there anything my program could do to turn tool offset off?

At a loss for an explanation. 18 minutes and counting LOL

Thanks , John

Win 7 32
Mach .062
MSM 2.0

[DaveCVI]

Hi John,

Aug 20, 2012 11:05:11 GMT -8 cherokee140d said:

At a loss for an explanation. 18 minutes and counting LOL

I will probably never answer again as quickly as I did that time - but now I've set your expectations for 18 minutes...

Aug 20, 2012 11:05:11 GMT -8 cherokee140d said:

Happened again today, mid program. X appears to have suddenly gone minus by approx .4". That is "Co-incidentally" the offset of the master tool!.

The Tool offset value for the master can't be anything other than 0.
Therefore, I think you mean this is the amount for the Work Coordinate Offset for X; correct?

The things that I know of that will cancel Tool offsets in lathe mode are:
1) TXX00 - offset index 00 = no tool offset applied
2) G49 - which is a mill Gcode for cancel offsets that Mach seems to accept and process when in either lathe or mill mode.
2a) beware- some of the mach turn wizards emit G49 (incorrectly I believe).
3) is there a G49 in the mach config dialog Initialization string?
4) is the general config option "remove tool offset" on Pgm end or M30 OR rewind checked? If so, could you have done one of those and that in turn removed the offsets?

If what really happened is that the WC Offset got canceled, there are probably other things to look at.

Aug 20, 2012 11:05:11 GMT -8 cherokee140d said:

When I switched to the tooling page the green Master Tool light was out.

However, the only thing that I know that will turn master too mode on/off is the master tool mode button. This should be independent of whether the Tool offsets are active or not.

So if you are finding the MTM button off, when you did not click it, I have to suspect that it got "clicked" somehow....
So then we ask ourselves: How could that happen...?

5) are you using a touch screen on the system? Could a touch screen be false triggering due to being splashed, brushed against etc?

6) a stray mouse click when the cursor is over the button?

A rather low possibility:
7) any other scripts running under mach that could be using the same DRO & LED space that MSM uses? (MSM uses 1700-1899). A script that was writing to the space used by MSM would cause havoc as then there are two scripts, each thinking they are the sole user of certain DROs and LEDs.

Dave

[cherokee140d]

I know I took more than 18 min. but I had to go out to the shop & verify all the settings.

Tool Offset was .4 for the tool I was using (T0404). Sorry for the confusion.

1. Txx00: Unlikely as I have removed all the T0000 statements.
2. G49 Definitely ON
..Removed from program rebooted Mach & it still appears on the info line at the bottom of the screen. Like a dirty shirt-won't go away. See #4
3. Gen Config only specifies G80.
4. Unchecked "remove tool offset" & re-booted Mach.
5. No touch screen.
6. Unlikely a stray mouse click as I'm not in the tooling page during progran run.
7. Scripts using 1700-1899, Not in my programs.
It almost seems that it is hard coded somewhere?

Info line at bottom displays:
G15 G1 G18 G40 G20 G90 G94 G54 *G49* G99 G64 G97

Thanks, John

[DaveCVI]

OK, the g49 should show in the status line whenever there is NOT a tool offset applied. I know it's a tad odd to use a mill mode Gcode to show the status in lathe mode... One might expect to see Txx00 as the status lien entry - but Mach's lathe stuff was done back when as a derivative of the mill operation and the status line is a place that shows thru.

So if the G49 is shown in the status line, then no tool offset is currently applied. That will often be the state until a tool is mounted and offset applied by Txxyy (whether there is an offset when mach is started is a config setting: "persistent offsets").

The Tool Offsets LED and the G49 always correspond (LED On + no G49 or LED Off and G49 in status line) right ?

Do you have a simple test case that will show the problem?

(no offense meant, but I've still not found time to plow thru the parametric gcode that you last posted - simple code I can try quickly, if I have to study the program to figure out what it's doing, it tends to get put off until I have a big block of time... )

Dave

[cherokee140d]

Dave

There you go with those big words again. U'm, that was the simple code ;D.

Seriously, the problem occurs sporadically and not with any particular program.

Will try again tomorrow, with the new settings and keep my finger on the stop button.

Thanks, John

[cherokee140d]

Dave
Removed all G49's.
Made the other config changes you suggested.
Everything appears OK today.
Note to self. The only way to turn on TLO is to touch off.

Thanks, John

[DaveCVI]

John,
Sounds better so far.

Aug 21, 2012 15:42:27 GMT -8 cherokee140d said:

Note to self. The only way to turn on TLO is to touch off.

I don't understand this comment... perhaps it's vocabulary....

In the mill world we refer to TLO which stands for "tool Length Offset", which (for a vertical mill) is the Z axis offset for the tool.

In the lathe world we have just "tool Offsets" - usually one for X and one for Z. Since neither is really a "length" of the tool, we have "TO" instead of "TLO".

So, touching off a lathe tool will set a tool offset into the tool table, for the current tool, for the "touched" axis. One can also enter offset values into the tool table via the Tool edit dialog.

Touching off a tool establishes a TO value, but doesn't cause the value to used for anything. To use or apply an (already created) offset value, lathe gcode uses Txxyy

Txxyy will mount tool XX and apply the offsets from row yy in the tool table. Txx00 will turn off the current tool offsets (and mount tool xx).
The syntax forces the mount action to be coupled to the selection of TOs.

But the T word is what "turns on TO", not the touch off action.

Dave

[cherokee140d]

Dave

I stand corrected TO it is.
But the only way my TO light comes on is by doing a touch off.
T0101 does not cause the TO to light.
Perhaps my lathe is also suffering with sometimers.

John

[cherokee140d]

It's confimed. Both I and the lathe are clearly suffering from somreimers. ;D

Worked flawlessly today.

Thanks for everything.

John (I think)