topic Needing to know how to do a tool change at the end of a program in Fusion Manufacture Forum

Needing to know how to do a tool change at the end of a program

Anonymous — Mon, 04 Jun 2018 18:38:16 GMT

I need to know how to do a tool change at the end of my program. I'm running production parts and only using one tool. My machine whenever starting a program again automatically changes the tool to the next in the turret(it doesn't recognize there is a tool in the spindle). Thus i need to do a tool change at the end of the program so when I start the program again it will pull up the correct tool.

Re: Needing to know how to do a tool change at the end of a program

engineguy — Mon, 04 Jun 2018 20:46:51 GMT

@Anonymous

Hi, don`t know if this is what you need but it might work for you, first, whatever Post Processor you are using make a copy of it just in case this goes all wrong

Next open the Post in Notepad++ and use the "Search" to find the "function onClose" section of the Post.

If your Post outputs a "Return to Home" for the X and Y axis something like this :-

writeRetract (X, Y); // return to home

This probably the safest place to put the tool change as the Z axis has already Homed to it`s highest point (Machine Z zero) and the above line will take the X and Y axis to machine zero so in theory your job should be clear of the tool change, if your machines control automatically moves all axis to a "safe" tool change position then all the better

Copy and paste the code below where I have indicated and it should output a T* M06 at the end of the code just before the M30 line.

It will also output a G49 tool length compensation which should clear any tool offsets.

disableLengthCompensation();
writeBlock("T" + toolFormat.format(tool.number), mFormat.format(6));
if (tool.comment) {
writeComment(tool.comment);
}

However after all that I am really not that clear on how having a tool change for the current tool at the end might help, I would have thought that no matter if the machine does a change to the next tool in the changer at the start it would have to change back to the tool that is commanded at the start of your program anyway??

I would be really interested to learn about this, seems a very odd configuration of a CNC control, anyway best of luck with it

P.S. Here is what the code looks like at the end of my test program ;_

N160 M09
N165 G28 G91 Z0.
N170 G90
N175 G49
N180 G28 G91 X0. Y0.
N185 G90
N190 T1 M06
(8MM FLAT EM-MERLIN 55 DEG)
N195 M30

Regards

Rob

Re: Needing to know how to do a tool change at the end of a program

daniel_lyall — Mon, 04 Jun 2018 21:02:34 GMT

Are the tool numbers the same and what machine are you useing

Re: Needing to know how to do a tool change at the end of a program

Anonymous — Tue, 05 Jun 2018 10:19:45 GMT

Thanks for the response Rob. I ended up just taking out the tool change in the beginning of my program so it doesn't designate a tool thus not telling the machine to go to a specific tool. I also find this super strange that the machine "forgets" what tool is in the spindle after every program. I just started working with this machine ( OKK VM5 with a Neomatic 635 Meldas controler). Its very probable that this could be user error too but I had a service tech out working on it and he did mention this being an issue