While waiting for my Easy ATC to arrive, I decided to go through the manual to familiarize myself with the install and after reading the instructions I have a few questions that hopefully those that have received their can answer.
Will I need to now maintain 3 tool databases (Vcarve Pro, Masso and RapidChange)?
Will all my tools need to be numbered 1 through 5 to work properly?
Will I need to log onto the RapidChange website to update the macros every time I use a different set of tools in the changer?
I’m asking because if it’s a hassle to swap out the tools in the changer between jobs, or if I’m stuck with all my tools only using numbers 1 to 5, I’m not going to bother installing it.
Your 4 most commonly used tools can be in slots 1-4. Then number your remaining tools between 5 and 99 in your design software…I use Vectric and have each bit with its own tool number.
In the WebUI for the ATC, you will enter the bits with matching tool numbers and assign every tool with a number above 4 to Manual.
Finally, under F4 -Tools on the Masso screen, enter the tools (again) with matching tool numbers and assign each one to a slot (the slot number does not need to match the tool number) and each slot above 4 will go to your manual loading position that you set up in the WebUI.
As I understand it, there’s a change in the pipeline for the load scripts to request a specific tool number for manually loaded tools. For now, the request to load a tool is generic and you need to keep track of sequence yourself.
So, yes, you have to maintain the tool list in 3 places but no, you aren’t limited to tool numbers 1-5.
In my case, it was a bit of work to set up but I don’t change/reorganize my tool list frequently so it’s a one time pain.
When you generate the subroutines from the WebUI, you will get files 63x.nc where the x corresponds to the tool number. It’s easiest to copy them all to your thumb drive but you can limit it to just 631.nc - 634.nc plus the manual tools you will be using if you’re tight on space.
One note, in the 635.nc file and higher tool numbers, the message to load you tool manually doesn’t tell you which tool so you have to keep track of the sequence that they are used in. I wasn’t very good at keeping track so I wrote a script to go through the files and change the message to at least give me a tool number. The folks at Easy ATC may make this message change at some point in the future which will make it a lot easier to know which tool to load.
