Move axis for automatic tool change

Hi;. I'm nearly done with an OKADA VM500 LinuxCNC retrofit. It's a big mid-80's VMC with a twenty position carousel style ATC.

I have all of the I/O hooked up and can do a tool change by hitting buttons on Axis/Glade. Now I want to automate to work with an M6 Tx command.

What is the preferred method of doing this? I need to move the Z-Axis during the course of the tool change. It's not clear how to do this in classic ladder.

Any suggestions?

Thanks; Erik

take a look at the

linuxcnc/configs/sim/axis/vismach/VMC_toolchange/

example.

Thanks! I searched the docs and forum for hours and didn’t see this. Will go check it out.

eriksalo wrote: What is the preferred method of doing this? I need to move the Z-Axis during the course of the tool change. It's not clear how to do this in classic ladder.

Classic ladder has no way to move an axis.
So it is much easier to do a tool change like you are talking about with a G-code subroutine.
You can develop the subroutine first, then make it be called from M6 using G-code remapping.
However it probably makes sense to do the remapping first, as the supplied "stdglue" routines pass some useful parameters to the G-code.

I wrote the "carousel" HAL component specifically to interact with G-code routines, though it ought to work with Ladder too.

As mentioned earlier, the VMC_toolchange demo configs use both remapping and the carousel component. You can try them out (without moving any actual hardware) by choosing them from the config-picker in sim/axis/vismach/vmc_toolchange