pass a tool number back to currentoolnumber

with great help and assistance from Arceye , i now can proceed fitting my toolchanger , and it seems to be working , excepting a small hickup or future emc enhancement ! , as follows :

how can i pass a toolnumber back to currentoolnumber from a comp
i have a toolnumber derived from reading greycode and rather than manualy inputing the number using mdi with M6Tx etc , i'd like this read in to currenttoolnumber on startup , ?
and shown on a pyvcp panel etc .

any ideas on how to return the value of the tool in real time

with great help and assistance from ArcEye , i now can proceed fitting my toolchanger , and it seems to be working

Hi

Glad to hear the tool changer component is working!!!

I take it the component is warning that no tool number is set after you are homed and that you could just enter M6Tn in the MDI to update it?

The problem with trying to do it internally is that currenttoolnumber is set by iocontrol after it receives a toolchanged signal.
iocontrol just sets currenttoolnumber to the requested M6Tn toolnumber on being notified that change occurred.

For that reason the easiest way to update Axis is to M6Tn to the tool you are already on and the component will not move the ATC because it recognises that currenttoolnumber is not set, so this is an initialising command.

I don't know why Axis does not store the last used tool number and re-instate it at start up time, it could be because of the scenario in para 3.

At present the pin position I left visible for debugging, does not show a position until a tool change is requested.
I could change that and have it read position if currenttoolnumber is empty but I will have to do some thinking about how the data can be used.
It cannot just write to the iocontrol.0.tool-number because that is an output from iocontrol.

You could read it and automatically generate a M6Tn command outside the component, but that is just the same as doing it from the MDI really.

I'll have a ponder on it.

regards

Hi

I have amended iocontrol to create an extra pin to receive the start-up tool number from a further amended toolchanger component.

When linked in your .hal file the toolchanger will read the current position at start up, send it to iocontrol which will initiate a toolchange to that number.

Because the tool changer component knows that this is initialisation, no movement takes place and the current tool is updated in emc and the Axis display.

Files sent to you via email for testing

regards