Looking for information on probing for new tool length after tool change

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24 Oct 2021 13:38 #224091 by trainwreck
Hello everyone. I'm a hobby linuxcnc user on a hobby level machine which does not have an automatic tool changer. From what I've read in the docs and randomly around online, it sounds like linuxcnc is designed more with pro-level use in mind so an ATC is assumed. Unfortunately for me, that means as far as I can tell there isn't really a built-in way to tell linuxcnc (or the fusion360 post) that you need to probe for a new tool length when a tool change occurs. My way around this has been to just group toolpaths by tool and post them individually, which means if I have 5 tool changes for a part I will need to run 5 different programs for that job. This is working well enough, but it seems really inelegant and I'd love to be able to just post the whole job and let the machine probe the new tool automatically. Could anyone give me some information on how I could set that up, or point me towards that information if it already exists and my search skills have just failed me?

For reference, I'm using gmocappy as my UI and my machine is XXYYZ.

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27 Oct 2021 11:57 #224493 by andypugh
There is actually something to be said for programme-per-tool, I often do things that way. 

LinuxCNC doesn't assume a tool changer, as such, but does assume that tools can be mounted with a repeatable length (CAT, BT, R8, HSK etc). 
My mill has BT30 and that means that I can do a manual tool change and the system can immediately know the tool length from the tool table. 

If you need to measure the tool length then it is possible to fit a tool length probe and automatically measure the length after each tool change. 
Unfortunately this generally requires a remap so that a G-code routine is called when the intepreter sees an M6. 

However, the good news for you is that this is built-in to Gmoccapy, see the docs here: linuxcnc.org/docs/html/gui/gmoccapy.html...uto-tool-measurement 
 
The following user(s) said Thank You: trainwreck

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27 Oct 2021 12:22 #224498 by trainwreck
This is exactly what I was looking for! I had it in my head that I was going to need to pretty much write it from scratch so I didn't even think to check the gmocappy docs. Thank you!

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