Tool in spindle memory

Hi,

I had this problem before, but managed to solve it somehow, but now can't remember how.

When I shut linuxcnc down, and start it up again, I need it to remember which tool was left in the spindle, but with the machine that I'm busy with now, when I start linuxcnc up again on, iocontrol.tool-number will be = 0.

And at the bottom of axis, will display no tool.

I need it to remember which tool was left in the spindle. Any suggestions?

Hi, just to clear up matters : seems like there was no problem, but what I suspect must have been the problem, is that I had a power failure before I started encountering the problem, so computer shut down unexpectedly, so could have been that the parameters and .var file was not being operating right. This morning when I started the machine up, everything was perfect, so remains a puzzle and concern to me as to what caused the problem, and if it might occur again in future.

Thanks

Okay, I'm busy with another machine now, and the problem is there. It doesn't remember which tool was last selected. I have under the parameter = linuxcnc.var, and file is there, but no memory of what tool was last selected. Any ideas of what I could look out for? I am sure just a setting somewhere, but my brains are stuck.

andypugh wrote:

I do feel that this ought to be built-in behaviour. I wonder of we can make it so?

I agree - but I think it should be the toolchanger that giver the current tool number to motion via a HAL pin.
Then the toolchanger could get this number from mechanical means or by checking a file or data base.

Chris M

I think we should add an in pin to IO control for 'current-tool-number'.
Let the tool changer (or hal manual toolchange or any custom program) take care of tool memory.

I also think we should switch to IO control 2 as IIRC it handles tool change errors too.

As you said then a remap could manipulate the extra pins too.

Chris M

what version of linuxcnc are you using and what OS
so it might get into bugtracker if not written to the parameter

So I looked into adding a HAL pin for external tool number initialization.
( a first step towards having the toolchanger actually be the tool memory -though maybe that is not needed)

It was fairly simple to hack on a pin that automatically reloads (internally) the tool based on the HAL pin.

What is holding me up is that you would want that pin to be only checked once just after loading the iocontrol component.
There is even a function for initialization that could be used: EMC_TOOL_INIT_TYPE
but it seems to never be called.

I have no idea how linuxcnc starts/initializes, so I don;t know where to add a NML command to call EMC_TOOL_INIT_TYPE.....

Chris M