Best practices/Tool Touch Off/Material Origin

I Added a touch off plate as I started doing things that required a tool change and that's when I started to see things start to go all weird with the coordinate's... So I have done a fair amount of reading and have an understanding of why things are getting all weird with coordinates when I do a touch off..

So this is my understanding... If I am deviating from best practices or being more complicated than I need to be let me know.

Set Home (XYZ) - Sets the absolute machine coordinates.. (These should be near a limit of your machine depending on min/max travel)

Material Origin - MDI G10 L2 P1 X0Y0Z0 (Would set the G54 XYZ Based on the current tool length)

Now this is where It get s a bit murky in my head... When i go to change a tool that will obviously have a different length what is the best practice coordinate system to set the new tool length...

It looks like I should be using a G43.1 (I am just using a trim router so repeatability of tool changes is not possible)
But It doesn't appear that it can be set based on current tool position and I would need to touch off the current tool switch to absolute coords move to a known location change the tool move back above the touch plate then run a touch off again and calculate the offset and set it with a G43.1 Z(offset)

Or

simply change the tool... use a touch plate and set MDI G10 L2 P1 Z0(compensated for the height of the touch plate)?

It seems to me to be poor practice to change the z origin when changing a tool as that origin point has not changed.

If this is a manual tool change machine with non repeatable tool lengths, (such as a collet spindle router) there is not much point in even trying to use the tool table or tool length offsets. Simply re touch off the Z with the new tool installed using G10L2P1Z0. (if you leave out X and Y they will not be changed)

For example here is the sub routine I use to probe the Z and set the depth on a router, using a simple conductive touch plate. The surface probed will be set to G54 Z0.

That's the answer i was expecting to get... I was hoping to hear of a better practice method of doing it...

I am sure one day i'll decide to setup more than one work piece and use G55 or another coordinate system and forget that my touch off is only setting G54... I was hoping there was a implemented way to set the tool length so that it would be applied to all work G5X coordinate systems... Dunno if I will ever be running more than work piece at a time that I would need to worry about it but I thought I would just ask and see if there was a better way to do it.

Thanks for your reply... much appreciated!

You can specify the coordinate system specifically with the P term such as G10L2P2 for G55 or whatever one is active with P0.

Todd wrote:

For example here is the sub routine I use to probe the Z and set the depth on a router, using a simple conductive touch plate. The surface probed will be set to G54 Z0.

Todd, thanks perfect timing, I was trying to get my head around this earlier today. Thank you very much

the G10 L2 will not reload the G-code so you need to press reload
or you add a User Mcode that calls axis-remote reload

so the DRO is in sync