Centroid Community CNC Support Forum

There is a RF wireless tool touchoff sensor originally made by XHC called the DT02. I have noticed there appear to be some clones on the market now. This small portable RF sensor is nice and pretty accurate in my testing. It does have an issue that Acorn users need to be aware of if you choose to get one of these devices. After the Acorn is powered up and the RF base unit is powered, the RF touchoff sensor itself has not been initialized. You must touch the sensor's button to wake up the RF transmission device. If you forgot then you will notice you can not jog your Z axis in the negative direction and you will also notice you can't jog any axis in fast jog, the Rabbit mode. This is because the RF sensor has not initialized and Acorn sees this touchoff sensor as tripped, which restricts Acorn to jog slowly so you don't destroy a probe. The work around is to put a note on your machine to touch this RF touchoff sensor with your finger before you start any work right after you power on your machine. I am sure you can add some code to the start up macro to put a reminder on the screen if Acorn sees this input as tripped right after you start up your machine, to make sure you touch the sensor.

I made a short video to demonstrate this issue in the attached zip file. Hope this helps others that might be using this sensor. I purchased this after watching another user's video on doing a tool change with this device. I use this in a fixed position on my table and have a moveable touch sensor in addition to establish Z0 for the top of the material.
Russ

It took me a while to figure out what was going on after I added this same sensor. I tap it every time I power up, as you describe and all is well. I see it as a bit of a failsafe and it doesn't bother me. I also have it fixed and use another moving touch off. I highly recommend the DT02!

I agree. I like the DT02 tool measure, but only as a portable, not fixed device. For the exact reason Russ shows above. When in a fixed location, often a pain in the a$$ to reach by the operator, having to press once to enable full machine operability sucks. That said, when used as a portable the same conditions exist, but still are a pain, but in many cases the device is close to the operator console.

We could whine to get the software to not include the probing restrictions, but then that would be pushing Centroid toward the Mach rabbit hole of trying to make the software compatible with every piece of cheap Chinese **&^$ that they (the Chinese) can produce.

By the way. You can set the tool measure as an input, and write a macro for it, bypassing the "built in" restrictions on the probe and TLM. It just wont be written for your by the Wizard

Gary,
I totally agree with you completely. XHC could have made this a non-issue if they had discussed this with Beta testers for example. Interestingly enough some of the Chinese commercial CNC manufacturers sell their machines with this as the tool touchoff device. I read on cnczone a guy with an Omni that crashed his nice shiny end mill right through the device. Ouch.

In my case I have this unit attached near the front of my machine so it is very easy to reach as I install the first tool for a given job. I like your idea of setting up a macro. I have the M6 tool change macro measuring the difference between tools, is that where you make the changes to check for the DT input#4. Does Acorn look at that macro before it ever calls for a tool change.

I am still learning the PLC language and learned enough to get around CNC12 inability in 4.16 to subtract the tool length, and stuff like that making minor changes.

Russ

Russ...
On the Chinese machines I have seen that use this (using HHC smoothsteppers), the Z goes up if the TLM is in sleep mode. The Chinese don't beta test stuff, they sell it.

Just make a macro that looks for the input state during TLM "sleep". THEN display message "press to wake". It will now work as you wish

Well I have been reading up on the PLC programming language and think I might be able to do the following changes to the MPU.plc program. The Initial Stage of the PLC program is executed one time when you start up Acorn, per the programming manual. By add the last line in this initial stage if the Tooltouchofftriggered is true, then I can have it send out the reminder message to touch the DT02 tool touchoff sensor, so it initializes. I will have to try this and see if this actually works.

Russ



;- ;==============================================================================
;- InitialStage
;- ;==============================================================================
;- IF SV_MACHINE_PARAMETER_822 > 0 THEN SET HomeAllStage
;-
;- IF 1==1 THEN SET True,
;- SET OnAtPowerUp_M,
;- SET AxesEnableStage,
;- SET MainStage,
;- SET JogPanelStage,
;- SET LoadParametersStage,
;- SET MPGStage,
;- SET PLCBus_Oe_M,
;- RST DriveComFltIn_M,
;- RST DriveComFltOut_M,
;- RST PLCFault_M,
;- CycloneStatus_T = 300,
;- FaultMsg_W = MSG_CLEARED_MSG,
;- RST BadMsgStage,
;- SET MessageStage,
;- Initialize_T = 1000, SET Initialize_T,
;- ErrorFlag_T = 1000,
;- MsgClear_T = 1000,
;- RST InitialStage
;-
;-
;- ; PairedHomingStage IS STG70
;- ; ZriHomeStage IS STG71
;- ; ZFollowingStage IS STG72
;- ; LimitAllStage IS STG73
;- ; UsbMpgStage IS STG74
;-
;- IF Tooltouchofftriggered THEN InfoMsg_W = PRESS_TOOL_TOUCHOFF_SENSOR_TO_INITIALIZE

Great work Russ!

After I installed the DT02 I thought I was losing my mind when the Z went up on a tool change, then it "magically" started working after I slapped the DT02. LOL.

Good job Russ...

You must add your line before the RST Initialstage. Or it will never see it.
Also looks like you are adding this to plc file not src file. Must do it in src then compile

Arrow,
Thanks, yeah I knew this was not the source, but I was just reading on how to compile the PLC program and trying to figure out where this addition needed to be made. I will give it a test later today and put the line before the RST initial stage and see what happens.

Russ