On Tue, 2012-03-20 at 14:04 -0700, Ray Mitchell wrote: > I always thought that the small tools used for PCB work (the ones with the > colored beads on the shaft) were made so that the back of the bead is a > reference distance to the tip of the tool. Then you could change the tool, > push the bead up against the collett, tighten to a specific torque, and go. > > Ray M.
For me, there are too many moving parts with an ER type tool holder, so the bit's collar doesn't have a predictable surface to register to. I haven't used the collared bits without touching off first, so I can't say for sure how well the collars and ER collets work, but my guess is, it would be better to touch off. I've been playing with the jogable manualtoolchange today: http://wiki.linuxcnc.org/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?ManualToolChangeMacro and can't get it to load on LinuxCNC 2.4.6 (RIP). I can load the normal manualtoolchange component with "halrun", "loadusr manualtoolchange", but get an error "manualtoolchange directory or file does not exist" I also noticed, vvvv gettext.install("axis", localedir=os.path.join(BASE, "share", "locale"), unicode=True) is, vvvv gettext.install("emc2", localedir=os.path.join(BASE, "share", "locale"), unicode=True) in the normal file. I changed the jogable file to have "emc2", plus other edits, but no joy. I'm still working on this, but I can see where this and the tool change documentation could really put someone off. This is not meant to be judgment, just an observation. It seems to me it would be good to have a manual tool change go like this, ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Running LinuxCNC comes up on TxM6 Pause, and Display "Press button if clear to go to tool change position or jog to safe position to start motion to tool position." Click button, axes move to tool change position. Pause, and Display "Replace current tool with tool number x, and click button when done to start touch off" Replace tool and click button Pause and Display "Click button and jog to touch off X now..., (with Touch Off pop-up), Y now..., Z now... Click button if clear to move to Resume Program position" ... ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ or something like this. I know there may be valid arguments why this can't be done, but it seems like a worthy goal. So far, I've only used repeatable tool holders and the tool table, so I may be off base here. I do hope to have something to etch PC boards in the future. That machine will most likely not use repeatable position tool holders, so it will most likely be an issue for me soon. -- Kirk Wallace http://www.wallacecompany.com/machine_shop/ http://www.wallacecompany.com/E45/index.html California, USA ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ This SF email is sponsosred by: Try Windows Azure free for 90 days Click Here http://p.sf.net/sfu/sfd2d-msazure _______________________________________________ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
