Tool Setting Options For Routers and Mills

[Dan M]

Thank you Clint, I will will check it out and let you know how it goes. BTW in the macro at the beginning it calls out parameter 41 and it should be 43 the original macro I'm guessing that when you wrote it you were running 4.10 and the parameters changed in 4.12, it worked fine but on mine but I changed it to the correct parameter anyway. The strange thing is with the original macro once I noticed it and looked at parameter 43 mine was set to 3 I changed it but it didn't seem to make any difference what it was set to. Honestly I'm not worried about it since it works fine minus the fact that I have to trip the fixed tool setter when I first start up the machine. If I don't it will only slow jog and says prob detected, also if I don't trip it and try to run a job the z axis moves up instead of down. I'm assuming it's because it thinks there's a probe in the spindle and it's touching a part. I'm sure all of this has to do with the fact my hardware is NO and it needs to be NC to run correctly. Either way it works and it sounds like the update will be out soon and I just saw the new schematic and it has the same tool setter that I have so I'm sure it will work for me once released.

Dan

[slodat]

I have the same issue where it will only probe at slow speed unless I trip the probe on startup.

[cbb1962]

I thought it was something quirky with my setup that I had to trip the probe at startup or the Z moved up instead of down...

[slodat]

Mine moves in the correct direction, but it moves at the slow probe rate if I don’t trip the probe first.

[cbb1962]

If anyone is interested: I have modified my tool change macro to allow me to set the Z0 for G54 and G55 at the beginning of a run. It assumes that G54 will always be top of the spoil board and G55 will always be the top of the part. Fusion 360 allows me to define G54 and G55 as different setups. Then combine them into one g-code program. This macro simplifies and speeds up the process!

These are the options:

Here is the Macro:

mfunc6.mac

(14 KiB) Downloaded 161 times

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The macro also uses a modified post processor for Fusion 360 that allows me to display the tool information from Fusion:

M6 Dialog 1.PNG (11.2 KiB) Viewed 3956 times

Here is the Post Processor (change the extension from .txt to .cps)

Centroid_Mill_Franco_swissi_Rev-1.txt

(35.76 KiB) Downloaded 111 times

[Dan M]

To bad Vcarve doesn't have this option.

[Gary Campbell]

It does. You just have to setup each toolname as a variable, then output that variable as a text string. I've added that feature to ShopBot and WinCNC, Centroid will be next, once the after Christmas orders calm down a bit

[Dan M]

It does. You just have to setup each toolname as a variable, then output that variable as a text string. I've added that feature to ShopBot and WinCNC, Centroid will be next, once the after Christmas orders calm down a bit

Do you have a example of this you can point me towards Gary? I've only had Vcarve for about a month so I'm still learning the software. I don't know what a variable is or a text string. I'll search those terms on the Vcarve forum, it would be a very helpful thing for the type of work that I'm doing.

Thank you in advance for any help with this Gary.

Dan

Edit :

I found it, I didn't realize you were talking about the tool library. I apologize for not being clear that I was talking about the first part of his post about his revised macro that gives you a option to have two z-0's one for the top and one for the bottom.

Vcarve doesn't allow me to set different z-0 for the same file that I know of.

If I have for example a part with 4 different tool paths and I want 3 of them to zero off the top of the part and the 4th which would be the profile cut to cut out the part and zero to the top of the machine bed. When I tried to change the 4th tool path to zero off the machine bed it changed the other 3 toolpaths to the same z-zero. From what I've seen with my quick search of the vectric forum, the software won't allow you to do this. I would have to have a whole separate cut file with only the 4th toolpath for the profile cut out if I wanted to z-zero off the machine bed instead of the top of the part.

From what I take from Clints post, Fusion let's you do this in one file instead of two with Vcarve.

If you know of a way to do this in one cut file please let me know.

Thank you,
Dan

[Dan M]

It does. You just have to setup each toolname as a variable, then output that variable as a text string. I've added that feature to ShopBot and WinCNC, Centroid will be next, once the after Christmas orders calm down a bit

OK so I spent some time reading about document variables and there's not a option to set up a tool name as a variable. You can set up the diameter and so on but even then I'm not sure what you would use it for? I'm obviously not understanding what you mean by setting it up as a variable or how to go about it.

Any help would be great, I already searched Vetrics forum and came up empty.

Thank you,
Dan

[cbb1962]

If you know of a way to do this in one cut file please let me know.

You could edit the files together if it's for a production run - that's what I did before I figured out how to do it from Fusion, but it wasn't worth the time for one-off jobs.

There is a lot of things that I REALLY like about V-Carve Pro, vs. Fusion, but how V-Carve handles WCS isn't one of them.