Tool Change from the elusive Black Button
 

Hi all

Just wanted to give you an option for your Black button on the Y control box, making it work to initiate the tool change and measurement.

I want to say this works on my machine and I give no guarantee it will work on your so please check everything before letting this loose on your MM.

In my case I use Gerry's 2010 screenset and that offers 2 different tool change macros - a single touch off with a movable plate and a double touch off with both a movable and fixed plate. These run from 2 different macros, in this case M881 (dual touchoff) and M889 (single touchoff).

As most will know you can't run more than one macro from a button under normal situations but with the aid of a plugin it is possible. The plugin I use is the Mach Mad plugin, my version is 3.8. This plugin is available from a few places in the world, I got mine from Peter Homann in Australia for the princely sum of A$11.00.

The plugin allows you to, among other things, run a macro from a USERLED in Mach and I only found out today that USERLED's do not need to exist on your screenset. With this ability, the combination of a brain and the plugin you can execute all sorts of things.

Here's how it works for the toolchange macros.

You create a brain to monitor two inputs, I assigned OEMTRIGGER#10 to pin 15 and OEMTRIGGER#11 to pin 13, Inverted the signals and passed them to 2 OEMLED's, 2250 and 2251 in my case, making either of them turn ON.

I then told Mach Mad to monitor those two USERLED's and when one of them becomes active to run one of my toolchange macros. So USERLED2250 runs M889 and USERLED2251 runs M881.

On my Y control box I have a black pushbutton (NO) plus a 2 way switch that also contains two NO contact blocks. Wire one side of the button to one side of both switch contact blocks. Wire the other side of the button to BOB ground. Connect one wire from the other side of each switch contact block to the 2 pins on the BOB, pin 15 and pin 13 in my case.

You will also need to edit your macro to turn the USERLED OFF for the next invocation.

Once you refresh Mach and load and activate you brain you should now be able to switch from Single touchoff to Dual touchoff just by flicking your switch and pressing your black button.

I would assume any other screenset with a macro for the touchoff could be done in the same way.

Let me know if you need clarification of anything or make this work on your machine.

Cheers
Bruce

Thanks for the time you took to share your process and information