I have a tool setter on my Onefinity Elite, and the normal set-up with that is to enable auto tool zero. When that’s enabled, after homing it will move over to the tool setter and touch the tool on it. However, when my machine is first powered on, I usually don’t have a tool in the collet, so this process, and hence homing, will fail. I also usually leave the tool head parked in the back when I shut the machine down. And after powering on, before homing I can only jog the toolhead about half way towards the front of the machine. This means I can’t reach the tool head to insert a tool until it’s been homed. This seems like a catch-22. What am I missing?
Hey motocoder,
Before homing, the machine does not know where its carriages are. They could have been moved when machine was off. Therefore every CNC machine has to execute homing once after startup. That is the purpose of homing: To let the machine know where its carriages are.
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I have my elite setup to touch the tool setter OK without a tool installed. My set up moves to the home position then it will go to the tool setter and touch off with just the spindle chuck , no tool.
Sometimes I start the homing and hit the e-stop and jog to a location so I can put in a tool, then start home again, no issues.
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Yes, of course I understand that. But with some controllers you can temporarily disable the limit check, so you can move the carriage (carefully). I thought perhaps there was a similar feature here.
This won’t work with mine where I currently have the Z-slider mounted.
I think this is what I’ll have to do - or just remember to bring the thing before before powering down. Or maybe just chuck up a 1/4" dowel rod. Is there any issue with leaving something in the chuck for long periods of time?
So, I am like you I do not like to keep a tool in the collet. Just don’t like it!! I think the home/e-stop/move/load tool/home works great. or yes move to front or back if you can get to it as your parking
location is also good, Load your tool before you turn on the machine and home.
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One more thing, I am not 100% sure why the system needs to touch off right after the homing operation.
I would think after you home, load your first tool, zero and then start the job the first move could just be to the tool setter to touch off or maybe just do it after the first new tool is loaded? Can our 1F Leader give us some insight into why we need to go to the tool setter as part of homing?
That’s a good question. I’d ask that over on the Masso forum if you don’t get an answer here.
I got an alternative option from someone over in a FB group. I have verified that this works:
You can jog to the front, it will stop about half way. When it stops you can double tap home, and then tap home again to stop the homing sequence. At this point you can continue to jog to the front (put your bit in), then home as normal.
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Agree. Why does it touch off in the homing operation. After touching off, the z home position is no longer zero. Shouldn’t it be zero after homing to the limit sensor? If you check “Only auto tool zero when manually requested” It wont try an touch off during the home operation but that also kills any M6 Txx command too which sucks because that is nice. It forces you to go into the tool menu and manually command a touch off. I guess my question is, does touch off during home corrupt the home operation?
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The reason it’s touching the toolsetter is to establish the relative position of the tool from the Z home position during homing is so that it already has this value to use for the offset adjustment when the job starts and triggers an initial tool load.
It is entirely possible that this could be coded differently. For example, it could skip the tool setter touch-off during homing, but note that this hasn’t been established. You would then use the probe to calibrate the Z offset to the work surface as usual. Then later when the job starts and commands the initial tool change (load), it could go check the tool setter offset for the current tool before stopping to allow you to change tools, and then finally doing a tool setter touch for the tool you just loaded. That’s not what it does, however. There may be very good reasons for that, I don’t know.
What I would really like is an option that causes it, after homing, to prompt you to load a tool, and then after you do that it goes and does the tool setter touch.
In any event, it’s a minor inconvenience.
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