I reinstalled the latest one and played with it more today.
Its definitely screwy. The tool set routine is erroring out very far away from the z limits - soft or hard. It errored out about 2.5 inches from the bottom of Z travel today, with a probing routine I previously performed .750 above the vice jaws. I actually probed at a machine coordinate .060 lower than the tool setter. Then I maxed out my Z soft limit and it wasnt enough to use a 1/8” drill. As far as I can tell, there is no way to use the tool setter with the new update if you intend on using endmills 1/4” or smaller and all drill bits smaller than 3/16”. If you dont have the riser for the tool setter, id say that no tool will work in the machine at all. I like the updates with the new version but this one bug makes the machine unusable for me with it installed.
What does “safe Z height” do, and why cant you set it below .500”?
This is how industrial machines function. When you jog the machine into a soft limit it just stops. No errors, warnings, faults, pop-ups, nothing. Not sure why LS decided to make their machine different.
My Fanucs do pop a dialog when you hit the limits. Mainly by flashing the barberpole red, and then you have to go hit ‘message’ to find out what it’s upset about, if you couldn’t already figure it out. It also goes into a mode where you can’t handwheel towards the limit (obviously) but you can handwheel away from it. To get off the sensor. Then you just hit reset and you’re golden.
The swisses (Mitsubishi) just stop. They don’t say anything. (I haven’t looked. They may flash an error message, but it’s nothing huge.) Mainly, they just stop until you handwheel back off the sensor. (Barberpole goes red.) You do need to hit ‘reset’ to clear the error before you do anything requiring the computer.
Both systems have sensors at both ends of the travel, so there aren’t really ‘soft’ limits, it’s twigging on real sensors.
It’d be a nice thing if the MR1 would flash a message, but let you move in the safe direction, and then auto-clear once you’re back ‘far enough’, whatever that may be.
I don’t need to be turning around and clicking “OK” all the time on a movement error.
I cut my teeth on plain old fanucs so the alarm/pop-up is a familiar annoyance, but having run everything else from Toyoda to Okuma it is nice to just jog to a limit and not have to clear a message over and over.
It could just be a pop up that says you’re against a soft limit and when you jog away from the limit it goes away. That’d be very nice for when I’m jogging the machine around for various reasons.
Checking in for progress on the next update. The latest has been pretty solid for me aside from the tool presetter issues. I finally ran into a shorter drill that wouldn’t work on the presetter. I manually jogged the tool down until she lit up and set the Z manually to get through that program, but it’d be nice to see that functionality go back to being useable 100% of the time.
Also, thanks again for the MDI addition. I have used that several times to make short programs. Its nice not having to open up notepad to create a program file to do a 4 line interpolation program.
Zachary, do you guys plan on releasing a revision to fix the toolsetter stuff prior to the next full version or is that something that will be long term?
Im trying to decide if its worth making a quick detach version of a very tall toolsetter so i can swap a spacer in. Id really like to use the new software.
Sorry about being MIA there for a little bit as the office has been really busy + some personal matters that happened ~a week ago so I haven’t had much time to work on CutControl.
Still looking to get the Auto Toolset fixed before another major update but I unfortunately do not have a time frame atm. I’m also looking into a bug that is popping up a bit as well with the JVM launch error that has popped up similarly to the FireControl “Child process exited” error we had been having for a while. Seems to specifically be certain AMD processors that are affected..
I’m also still planning on expanding the alarm suppression as well to make it more fully fleshed out.
Will do my best to keep y’all updated as much as possible, near the end of the year things tend to get really busy in the Tech Support office but I don’t want to leave y’all hanging for too long without any updates.
I have a new bug involving the auto tool set, in order to compensate for the issue i used the elevated platform adapter langmuir sells as suggested, and that mostly took care of my tool too short issue, but if i use a tool that is a bit too long the spindle will come down on the tool setter crash and keep going till it torques out, it happened the first time on me yesterday and totally wrecked the tool setter touch plate, unfortunately by the time i noticed this it already came down hard on my tool setter, so i figured i might as well test a few more times to see where it is happening, it seems to happen when the tool height puts it somewhere near 1/8” to 1/4” distance from the tool setter when it begins its auto tool set routine. it will not stop no matter what you do from touching the tool setter, i think this should be part of the logic that if the tool setter trips at any point before it begins its move to calibrate after auto tool set is selected it either trips or takes this into account for calibration if the spindle is at the proper location as selected for tool setter location.
I havent experienced that one yet but it sounds to me like the auto tool set logic is far more complicated than it needs to be.
It sounds like they should just have the routine take the spindle to Z maximum, rapid transit to the setter, and plunge to Z minimum’s soft limit with the setter active the whole time and ready to trigger. No need for any go/no go zones. I dont see where the current configuation offers any tangible increase in safety.
In my case, I cant use any 1/4” and smaller tools, the 3/8 roughers or half my drills. In your case, the tool setter is trashed because you used a long tool. With so little Z room available on this machine, Its a huge issue when youve got such a narrow range of allowable stickout. The new update has lots of great features, but it basically “bricks” my machine because Im working with small parts. I forgot I had the new software installed (ive been going back and forth) today and when I got to the third op on a part that required an 1/8” endmill, i realized my mistake. Had to set Z zero with feeler gauges off the top of the faced part then compensate for the material removed already to calibrate for that op. Everything else about the new update is awesome, however.
I’ve tried it again today, and definitely a replicable error. My tool setter is pretty trashed now and I can’t get any semblance of a decent set point on changing tools anymore. langmuir-zachary is there any possibility customer service can help me out with this issue and get a replacement tool setter?
I’ve been manually setting my Z offset using a 1-2-3 block since my first run in with the tool setter bugs. Luckily I didn’t wreck out my tool setter, and the MDI feature outweighs the tool setter functionality for me personally.
Definitely looking forward to a future version getting pushed out that will correct that problem. Hopefully it’s not pushed way out into the future with their seasonal workload.
I’ve also had the new update drive tools into the tool setter pretty hard but that shouldn’t damage the tool setter electronics since a crash simply opens the switch and mechanically compresses a spring pulling the contacts away from the sensitive electrical board. Having said that my tool setter has stopped working. Not sure if the spring is damaged. The setter sticks in the open position keeping the lights on 95% of the time. I might need a new spring. (or I need to take it apart and clean the contacts)
I have personally rebuilt the one I have twice now. The tool setter is not coolant proof and the rubber boot cover over times swells and doesn’t seal very well. Having said that the contacts on the circuit board are most likely have become corroded.
good to know. I took it apart and blew some clean air in there from the bottom but didn’t remove the circuit board. I was hoping that blowing it out would work, and it didn’t. I’ll have to pull the circuit board and clean those contacts.
does the old version of cut control crash into the tool setter? i was about to install mine and test it out but i dont want to trash it right out of the box.
24.1.1 was solid for me for several months. There are some quirks, but no built in machine crashes.
Hopefully they get this fixed soon, because your case is my concern for LS. If this isn’t taken care of pretty quickly it could rack up some costly repairs if numerous machines start getting crashed from the software.
@langmuir-zachary , can you give a rough ETA of the next software update to fix the toolsetter problems?
For me the lack of pop-ups is much more valuable than a tool setter. I used to be forced to hit the mandatory pop-ups hundreds of times during a production run and only used the tool setter like 4 times in that same production run. Because the dang pop-up button is so small I end up hitting the screen 3 times before I hit the correct spot. hhhhhhhhhhhhhhh I will not go back to the old way even if they never fix the tool setter. hahaha