ATC persistent position

Thanks for sharing and I think I understand what you did. I assume you generate a signal in Ladder Logic to trigger the MDI 02 command.

I can save the pocket to the var file OK now and tool number is also there after shutting LinuxCNC down. So far so good.

Now I want to use the 'Home All' button to read tool number and pocket number but for some reason I can't get it to work. In Hal Configuration I can see the 'halui.home-all' pin but it does not toggle when I press 'Home All'. Can I use this pin or is it not available to trigger an MDI command?

I added to my postgui.hal:
net tool-load halui.mdi-command-02 <= halui.home-all

LinuxCNC starts up OK but when I press 'Home All' the machine homes normally but it does not load my tool and pocket number.

In my INI I added:
[HALUI]
MDI_COMMAND = M11
MDI_COMMAND = M12
MDI_COMMAND = M61 Q#5451

Tool number does not load but when I manually type M61 Q#5451 into the MDI it does so I am guessing the 'Home All' button does not work the way I intended.

Can anybody see what I am doing wrong or if this this is possible at all?

Thanks and Happy Holidays!

G21

OK, I figured it out. You cannot issue a MDI command when the machine is not homed yet. I decided to set it up like this to make sure nothing will go wrong.

I went with a Classic Ladder solution to detect each axis is homed or not and when they are, use the output from the Classic Ladder to trigger the MDI_COMMAND = M61 Q#5451 and load the tool number. I used a timer to have this signal only True for 0.5 seconds to avoid loading over and over again.

All OK for now, continue working on the rest now.

G21

Good.
I don't remember exactly, but I think I have done exacly as you that the ladder trigger when homing is finished.

Be careful about G43 tool length compensation. As I have it now (and you also I suppose), the tool is loaded at start but the tool-length compensation is not updated. This can be dangerous...
I think I would like G43 to be automatically applied always, I am thinking about adding it to the tool change macro, but I have not tested yet.

Yes I noticed that, also I found that the tool number was not always updated correctly. I fixed this by adding this to the end of my toolchange.ngc:

M61 Q#<selected_tool> ;set current tool number
G43 ; Tool length offset

So far it seems to be working but I had a few instances where the .var file was not updated correctly when shutting down LinuxCNC. I think the reason was that I had the .var file open to see what was being written to it and this caused LinuxCNC on shut-down not to write the values correctly. If the .var file is not open, all works as expected.

Now working on the different tool change scenarios, tool in spindle = tool requested needs to skip the tool change and tool in spindle = 0 just needs to load the tool and not unload a tool first.
Making progress at least.

Thanks again!

G21.