Caution: Moving back to A0B0

[Underspec]

Looking for a solution to solve this issue....


An error occured while I had the probe head in the angle position and when I reran the program the probe head decided to go back to A0B0 without moving to the starting point first. Well, this almost damaged the probe head because it was close to the surface plate when it did this.

There an option to fix this? Or do I have to code the program with ONERROR lables to move to a safe position or will that work? What are your thoughts...

[Jason Labhart]

maybe

I don't know of any permanent way around this. At the beginning of every program you are always asked, "Press OK when ready to move PH9/10" and when you click "OK", it will set the angle to whatever angle is specified at the very beginning of the program. If you know the probe angle is actually at A90B0 and you wanted to re-start the program, I think you could change the start angle to A90B0 and insert an angle change to A0B0 before it actually takes any hits. Of course, you would have to remember to delete that before you run the program again from the beginning. Maybe some of the guru's will have a better answer.

Jason

[craiger_ny]

...................... At the beginning of every program you are always asked, "Press OK when ready to move PH9/10" and when you click "OK", it will set the angle to whatever angle is specified at the very beginning of the program. ..................

This a default setting. If it is turned off in the settings it will not ask. I am not sure it is possible to anticipate the angle that someone quits at in order to start the program that way, then turn around and specify it at the beginning of the program before moving to a safe spot. I am going to try some flow control to test for being in a safe zone at the beginning of a program and moving according to the tests applied by flow control, because I think you are on to a good idea Jason. The next challenge would be the whole knowing what tip somone left off with. I don't think PCDMIS will do it but I bet VB can (maybe, I am going to check this one). I wonder if I could write a VB module to check for the current probe angle position, check it to the program call out for tip angle to see if they are the same, then run a test to see if you are in a safe position and take action accordingly. Sounds like quite a challenge but boy it would be worth sharing if it could be pulled off. Might be a pipe dream solution but I might look into it, see how intimidating it all would really be. Surely I am not the first to wonder or is that something else talking at 11 pm?

[Don Meredith]

All of my programs start with an Operator Comment to position the PH9/10 for a tip rotation to the starting tip angle. This goes in before the Load/Probe command. When the Load/Probe is added to the program, pc-dmis reads the current tip angle and uses that as the starting angle. You can either change the angle manually before adding Load/Probe or select from the tip list to change to what you need for first tip angle.

[craiger_ny]

I prefer to keep my operators little hands away from the drop down that inserts tip rotations. I have had a few helpers cost the company some money by doing that. Here our machinists run the CMMs as they are located on the shop floor right next to their machines. They barely understand all the buttons on their lathes let alone the PCDMIS programming environment. Everything we do has to be as operator independent as possible. I like the comment before the loadprobe. I am going to give puting some flow control and then some moves in there and see if that works.

[Matthew D. Hoedeman]

USed to be, way back in the days of V3.2063 (the LAST one that worked really well) you could MARK-ALL and NO MANUAL features and the first tip called out in the program woudl NOT mark and NOT run. My alignments are in seperate programs, so my check routine should only ever have DCC moves/features in them, so if I mark-all, no manual, it should NOT ask nor even TRY to rotate to that first tip, but with V3.5 and up, it does. In V3.2063 you could have ONLY the DCC stuff marked (and it would stay marked) and you could ahve a clearance plane move before the first DCC tip and it WOULD move to the clearance plane BEFORE it tried to change the tip. THis was very handy, it kept you from twanging your probe, but alas, the good die young (as well as good functions and features).

[craiger_ny]

That's right forgot about that, ah the good old days.

[Underspec]

I've been thinking and I think it would work by inserting ONERROR goto label commands then using incremental movements....but then again you can't anticipate all errors and where they occur. Would be a great accomplishment if someone could achieve this. More AI to our programs!

[John Kingston]

..........was very handy, it kept you from twanging your probe, but alas, the good die young (as well as good functions and features).

But Matt, I like twanging my probe.......ooops wrong site!

I try to have all my progams start and finish with the probe in the same orientation and X,Y,Z location. That may help with those problems.

[Matthew D. Hoedeman]

Same here, at the end of all my programs, I go back to the 0,0 tip and have it move to a 'safe' location, usually over the right-rear of the fixture. Clear enough to change parts and clear enough for any tip change. I do like to stay over the fixture base, for ALL my moves, then as long as the base is within the machine travel, it will not hit a limit anyplace.

[Gregl]

I have all programs start & end at A0B0 and a location above & front of probe rack,almost same spot.

I also have a junk program that operators can open to reset to A0B0 if the need occurs, that way they are not using the drop down in the good program.