Timer variables TMn.P

I am new to this list and hope to participate quite a bit in the future. I started moving over to EMC2 en of last year and still have a lot to learn.
I am a founder member of a new local interest group and we have about 10-15 new members who will become involved with EMC shortly. We are in Pretoria, South Africa.

I have successfully got a small lathe (EMCO C5 CNC) and milling machine (EMCO F1 CNC) converted and running. The milling machine is basically fully functional with spindle speed control using a PID loop and a MPG.

The lathe is giving me some problems with regard to the toolchanger, which I am setting up with classicladder. The following problem appeared:

The TMn.P variables seem to disappear after shutting down and restarting EMC. I use them to set variable count down times according to the number of the tool to be moved to. The WATCH window does not display them from the GUI. Only the %W0, %W1, etc variables are shown. I use an ASSIGMENT to calculate the value of TMn.P, which can be from 2 to 90 msecs.

When you set it up from within EMC and start it running it works fine. After shutting down EMC and restarting the setting of the TMn.P variable does not work - it seems to remain 0.

Any help to clarify will be appreciated. I am on the 8.04 Ubuntu system with the latest EMC2.

Please post your classicladder file. Which version of EMC are you using.

Chris M

I am using emc2_2.3.4-1. I will post the .clp files later tonight.

As said before, I find it strange that the timer variables are not shown in the WATCH window, in accordance with the
Inegrator Manual. It would have helped to be able to see them.

Could not upload the classicladder file toolch.clp.

I found a way around the problem. By adding a small value to the case when M0.P should be have been zero, the
ladder program seems to work consistently, ie.

original: %M0.P = 18*(%W1 - %W0) - if this is zero the ladder program fails afterwards.

current:: %M0.P = 18*(%W1 - %W0) +1 - seems to work in all cases

maybe there is some logic behind it.

Rudy

rudydp wrote:

I am using emc2_2.3.4-1. I will post the .clp files later tonight.

As said before, I find it strange that the timer variables are not shown in the WATCH window, in accordance with the
Inegrator Manual. It would have helped to be able to see them.

To upload the ladder file change it's ending to .txt
To be able to see the timer variable change the %W0 to %TM0.P in the watch window