many issues with millturn

[neptunier2]

good morning,

i am in the process of setting up a gang block in millturn and i have many issues. i am using the latest mach3 and the latest msm on windows xp. mill has the same coordinate system as yours, in general config the two offset things are switched off.

1. probing: after loading my probe tool with t9999 the probe routines in z and x give the error: "probe runtime error #13 type mismatch" in this case my probe, a 10mm diamater ball end touches the surface the first time and then the error shows up.
y probing works fine. in mill mode probing works fine on all axis.

2. after that probing i manually set the dro's to match the front left corner of the gang block, x-5 and z0. then i say goto zero, the z axis works fine but the x axis is missing 2mm. i could repeat this behaviour.

although the radius for the probe tool is set to 5 mm, in the y axis ( where the probing routine works) sets the dro to y=-1 when the ball tip is 1mm away from the part. it should say -6.

3. on the settings page, you can choose whether to home first z and then x or vise versa. that does not work for me, it just homes x first regardless which button you activate.

4. setting the tool block coordinates worked a number of times. one time i wanted to override the tool block offset in a session and it says i should apply g92.1 i did that and since then the button set tool block offset is not working anymore, even after 3 new starts of windows.

with setting up the y offsets on the gang block, i could not get the "fixed y offset" to work since my master tool sits in the middle and spacing is not even. so i measured and manually changed the "y/turet" dro although it has no green line arround. it seems to work. maybe that is worthwhile mentioning in the manual, for me it was a lot easier.


am i right that every tool including the master tool should have a y offset? that is the offset from the front left corner of the gang block?
so the workflow would be
homing,
mount probe tool,
probing front left corner of gang block,
press set tool block zero button
mount mastertool t0101 (now the y coordinate should switch because of y offset of the master tool?)
in y go to zero,
lowering the z axis for setting z zero,
touching off the x axis (use touch off routine from screen) for x zero
did i get this work flow right?

thanks and a good 2017 to everybody,
michael

[neptunier2]

hi dave,

i hope you had a nice vacation. did you have a chance to look at the problems i wrote in my last post?

thanks,
michael

[DaveCVI]

Hi,
Sorry for the delay in responding, hopefully you had seen the notice that we were on vacation until recently.

Mill Turn is probably the least used part of the MSM package, I get very few users actually exercising Mill Turn and The details of it have begun to fade from from lack of use. However, let's see if we can get the things you mentioned resolved.

good morning,

i am in the process of setting up a gang block in millturn and i have many issues. i am using the latest mach3 and the latest msm on windows xp. mill has the same coordinate system as yours, in general config the two offset things are switched off.

I'm not sure which settings you are referring to... here is how I have the Axis DRO Properties panel set on my machine:
In the "axis DRO Properties" panel in the mach config dialog I have
Checked: Tool Selections Persistent
Unchecked: Optional Offset save
Checked: Persistent Offsets
Checked: Persistent DROs
unchecked: Copy G254 from G259.253 on startup

In general you want the [persistent selection on. Without these mach will not remember anything between mach sessions- and that includes all the user DROs and LEDs that MSM uses to implement stuff internally.

1. probing: after loading my probe tool with t9999 the probe routines in z and x give the error: "probe runtime error #13 type mismatch" in this case my probe, a 10mm diamater ball end touches the surface the first time and then the error shows up.
y probing works fine. in mill mode probing works fine on all axis.

I've tried this an all seems to be working here - no error messages from the probing routines. I suspect that something is not installed fully. Normally I would suggest reinstalling MSM - and I'm going to suggest that here also, but with a new beta version. (I fixed at least one issue you report below in this new beta).

I'll send you privately a url to a new version to DL and install.

2. after that probing i manually set the dro's to match the front left corner of the gang block, x-5 and z0. then i say goto zero, the z axis works fine but the x axis is missing 2mm. i could repeat this behaviour.

although the radius for the probe tool is set to 5 mm, in the y axis ( where the probing routine works) sets the dro to y=-1 when the ball tip is 1mm away from the part. it should say -6.

Let's get the probing routines working first (this may be a down stream effect). Since you are manually setting the Zero points (by zeroing the axes?), and then there is an offset, I can't tell exactly what might be happening here - I'll need a more detailed with out a more detailed step by step to follow this one.

3. on the settings page, you can choose whether to home first z and then x or vise versa. that does not work for me, it just homes x first regardless which button you activate.

This is a bug. I retested this and found that the "goto TC" was following the button options, but the ref home script was not. I fixed the code and have uploaded anew beta. Please install it and confirm that this is now working correctly again.

4. setting the tool block coordinates worked a number of times. one time i wanted to override the tool block offset in a session and it says i should apply g92.1 i did that and since then the button set tool block offset is not working anymore, even after 3 new starts of windows.

with setting up the y offsets on the gang block, i could not get the "fixed y offset" to work since my master tool sits in the middle and spacing is not even. so i measured and manually changed the "y/turet" dro although it has no green line arround. it seems to work. maybe that is worthwhile mentioning in the manual, for me it was a lot easier.


am i right that every tool including the master tool should have a y offset? that is the offset from the front left corner of the gang block?
so the workflow would be
homing,
mount probe tool,
probing front left corner of gang block,
press set tool block zero button
mount mastertool t0101 (now the y coordinate should switch because of y offset of the master tool?)
in y go to zero,
lowering the z axis for setting z zero,
touching off the x axis (use touch off routine from screen) for x zero
did i get this work flow right?

thanks and a good 2017 to everybody,
michael

Let's get the above stuff updated and then come back to these if they are still being an issue.
(It can be unproductive to do debugging on a system that we know is broken (type mismatch error etc)).

Dave

[neptunier2]

hello dave,
thanks for your help. if the millturn option works fine, i think it is a very good thing to have, since fusion360 is free for hobbyists and startup and has a lathe cam module, it is a comination that could turn your mill into a cnc lathe for 100$. thats great! and your way of handling the offsets of the tools is much more elegent then manually setting work offsets in the code. so i hope very much we get it running.

i did as you suggested, downloaded and installed the beta version you send me.

changed the general config axis dro properties as you said.
i homed the machine.
did t9999 for the probe tool and tried probing. again get the mismatch error #13.

further i did not do anything.

any ideas?
thanks,
michael

[DaveCVI]

Michael,
I'll send you instructions re how to get a detailed probe trace log for the type mismatch error. Hopefully I'll be able to see what's happening for you from that.
Dave

[DaveCVI]

HI readers,
just a followup post - for those that may come read this thread later...

It turned out that the probe tip diameter had not been set into the X-diameter DRO for the probe tool. The manual could probably be clearer - the probe diameter needs to be entered into the X-Diameter value in the tool table - not the Tool radius DRO (which is for the radius of a lathe tool tip).

Dave