Calypso CNC User Forums

First, thanks for making an awesome screen set for mach3. It's truly a beautiful thing to behold.

Now on to my question:

When edge probing with TLO set I get very strange behavior. It finds all the faces correctly but then for some reason it retracts the z axis all the way to the z end stop and errors out. I've tried giving it more z clearance by probing on the table not the vice, but it still retracts all the way to the end stop and errors out.

Without TLO turned on, it works as expected.

The steps I use to reproduce it are as follows:

Start Mach3
Go to Tooling Tab and use MDI to issue 'T100 M6' (100 is my probe 4.125 TLO)
Insert probe into spindle
Complete the tool change in MSM
Press G43 button to active TLO
Go to WCS Tab, activate Probing
Position the probe over the test block
Press edge probing

Any pointers would be greatly appreciated.

It sounds like the TLO value is set to some strange value.
How was the TLO value for t100 determined?
Look in the tool table and see what the tlo value is for tool #100.

A normal gcode tool change sequence is
T100 M6
G43 H100
Note that this is assuming the convention that the TLO for tool 100 is in row 100 of the tool table (while this is common, other conventions are possible).
Also note that the TLO value is not applied until the G43 is executed (it is not applied as part of the M6 tools change).

When you use the "TLO on" button, mach does a G43 and implicitly uses the TLO value from the tool number row of the tool table.
So he effect is like having done G43 H100.

In any case it sounds like the TLO value is causing the problem - so check it's value as a first step.

Dave