what is the right command(sequence) for adding new tool?

Hi,

I'm able to manage changes of existing tools yet, but I had no success on adding a new tool to list.
Andypugh told me to treat tool-table-file as readonly, which works for minor administration changes.
I looked at the NML classes containing tool in name, but none of them sounded appropriate ...
... and most of them have no parameters.

Any hint is appreciated

I'm not sure if I misunderstand the question, but tool.tbl is certainly editable, which is the way I initially setup my tools.
Alternatively, you can add tools using File -> Edit Tool Table, from memory.

... but tool.tbl is certainly editable, which is the way I initially setup my tools.

Well, I know, that the file is editable - and you probabely restart linuxcnc after changing the file (outside of linuxcnc).

I'm working on an UI, that enables the user do all the tasks as with a professional mill.
After andypugh told me, that I should treat the file as readonly, I did some tests.
Linuxcnc (one of the background processes) reads the tool table file and NML-status structure reflects the tool table.
Changes to tool offsets are sent from the UI to linuxcnc and on shutdown linuxcnc writes the changes to that file.
Then I found out, that linuxcnc status structure can hold about 50 tools and I thought, what if you have a big tool changer for that 50 tools but have more tools than you can place in the toolchanger.
Then you need a way to put tools in and pull others out (for me tool table file holds the tools inside atc).
Physically no problem - respect to data this should be possible during runtime of linuxcnc.
For me its no problem to change tool-table file. But then I need a way to tell linuxcnc that the file has changed and need to be imported again.

Shuting linuxcnc down and restarting it again sounds quite unprofessional to me, so I look for another way.

May be someone has already done that and can shine me a light?

You can reload the tool table from within tooledit. linuxcnc.org/docs/html/gui/tooledit.html

HueyHQ wrote: I'm not sure if I misunderstand the question...

Yup, totally misunderstood the question!

Hi Phil,

thank you for that hint. I skipped tooleditor completely
As usual with axis, information is pretty obfuscated - but after all I found the command.
Yes, I overseen it too.
Will try it soon.
.

Yup, totally misunderstood the question!

Thank you for your attention anyway!

Cheers Reinhard

Hi,

I was able to do a quick test. Good news: it works.

Then I tested the "reload" of a complete different file. This worked too, but had the side effect, that the original tool table was overwritten with the content of the other file. That was unwanted.

So bug or feature?

I'd like the idea of loading different tool-table sets. But I'd like to preserve each file - same as with gcode files. So what about adding path of tool-table-file to Tool-stats and change persistence handling with a given new filename?

You could have four tool tables, say tools.0, tools.1, tools.2 and tools.1

tools.0 would be empty and it would be the one you specified in your .ini file

tools.1, tools.2 & tools.3 would be your real tool table sets

Create (or add to an existing) a GladeVCP panel with three buttons to load the tool tables

In the python handler file for each button have something like:

This would load the contents of tools.1 into the current tool table (tools.0) as the startup tool table

You wouldn't be able to edit tools.1, tools.2 or tools.3 from the GUI as it would only edit the current contents of tools.0

Hi Phil,

I kept thinking about tool management too and I finally came to the conclusion, that my conception of tool management is not appropriate for a cnc machine/controller.
So I probabely will create a standalone tooleditor with hierarchical tool definitions and lots of properties, so that you can share your tool definitions between cam and cnc-machine.
Then I will enable the tooleditor to generate a tool table file for linuxcnc (and another for a cam) and then a reload-button in the UI (together with single file handling) will suffice.

Thanks anyway

Reinhard wrote: I kept thinking about tool management too and I finally came to the conclusion, that my conception of tool management is not appropriate for a cnc machine/controller.

It probably is. But LinuxCNC itself is far too simplistic in its tool handling.

Some time ago I came up with this, and even got some way in to making LinuxCNC work that way:
wiki.linuxcnc.org/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?ToolDatabase