I’ve got the EX controller up and running now, with the table all squared up and everything trammed.
Still getting used to the overall control changes, but I like it.
One question I have about tool changing.
There are some fairly delicate bits that I use from precisebits.com, specifically engraving bits. They have collar’s installed on them, so the actual length below the spindle is known to within about 0.004" or better when installed, so hypothetically I could use these without touching off.
Alternatively, because the bits are fairly delicate, I’ve been touching them to the work surface and advancing the z down manually until it grabs a peice of 0.001" parchment. I’m worried touching off on the tool plate will actually break the sharp tip of these bits.
So, how can I skip the tool setter on a tool change for one of these delicate bits and at least manually jog it to the table surface?
Alternatively, is there any hope of carefully measuring one of these bits against the table surface, and getting it’s length fixed into the tool table?
I’m happy to dig in and start mucking with the tool change macro’s to an extent, but it’s unclear to me if the macro’s that Avid wrote are only using the public programming interface, or if Avid is making use of something that is only available under license from Centroid?
Is this the sort of thing you are looking for Eric? The idea there is to get a user input to determine if tool measurement should be skipped or not. I don’t think that will do exactly what you are asking for, but you get the idea.
I don’t know what Avid’s legal obligations are with Centroid, but all the Centroid macros are open-source and you are encouraged to modify as needed. ‘Modding’ the mfunc6 macro is a thing a lot of people do in the Centroid forum. My search of mfunc6 there gave 241 hits.
Firstly the spring rate on the fixed tool setter is very light. It’s likely that it will be fine with those bits.
If you’d prefer not to use the tool height of setter there is a manual measure option in the UTILs button on the control screen in CNC12. There you can manually put a bit on the work surface and it will take a measurement that way.
As far as our scripts we are using the standard macro programming language. All of the scripts are editable.
I don’t recommend editing them for this application however.
Firstly the spring rate on the fixed tool setter is very light. It’s likely that it will be fine with those bits.
Just to add to Eric’s point, I have the Centroid TT-4 which requires a whopping 25 oz of force to trip and I’ve had no problems with things like 15 degree V-bits. It is a bit scary (no pun intended), but any other tool setter with more reasonable spring rates should be safe.
I’ll give it a try and see if I run into trouble. In the meantime I’ll make sure I figure out the manual measure option.
Is there also an option to set material Z0 to the table surface easily?
A lot of my workflows are based on jigs that reference of table zero so I don’t have to mess around with measuring the part zero.
I can always just drop the touch plate on the table, but it would be neat if there was a quicker way to do it since the table surface height is getting tracked anyway.
If there isn’t something out of the box, I’ll probably look at writing a macro and adding a button to the VCP for it.
Easy! Just go into the WCS table in Set Part Zeros and set your Z offset to zero. 0= table surface. Any number larger than that is above the table surface.