duplicate tools

[TERRYH]

if you have a program where you have the same tool and doing say 3 operations with it facing the top cutting the OD and doing the top contour, all with the same name with a 2" facemill and your next tool is a 1" ball mill and you forget to name it something different than the first 3 and post it where in the settings is the error message warning that a tool change is required. it used to in a cut file give a warning if 2 different tools were selected. and a tool change was required. but it didn't give you that warning for a drill program where several tools and tool changes were in same program. hope this makes sense ....

[SledGeek]

This isn't quite clear......

Are you saying you picked the facemill when you wanted to pick the ball? If you pick the ball it shouldn't come up named as a facemill unless you named it as a facemill.

it's only going to post out what you tell it to. So if you picked the facemill, why would it error ?

 

or

 

Do you mean you named the same tool # as the facemill ? If thats the case , before it posts you should get the question about multiple tools using the same tool #. then it will ask you if you want a tool change in the NCI....it won't post unless you answer yes or no. So if you posted and ran code at the machine, then you answered the question and it's doing what you told it to do. In other words that question prompts a tool change or no tool change .

 

Dunno if that's what your looking for.....

[TERRYH]

I thought it was confusing without writing a book on it so I'll try again. Mastercam gives a warning if you try and post a program with a duplicate tool # asking if you are sure you want to post it anyways. What our other programmer did was had a 1" ball with a program name of say widget1 and had a 3/8 ball which was supposed to be widget2 but forgot to name it that and was named widget1 like the 1" ballmill so half way through the program it went up and tried to do a tool change because of the 2 different tools. our 3-d and 2-d cut programs use a .TAP extension don't know why it just the way they do it here and our drilling programs have a .PRG extension. so our cut files no matter how many tools we have force a tool #1 in the actual post so our machines can keep drills taps and whatever loaded in the tool changers without changing them for cut files. and our drilling programs are posted with different tool numbers 1,2,3,4 ect. He was wanting to know if there was a setting somewhere where we could have it tell us that multiple tools were selected or a tool change was required, which I don't think there is only the same tool number warning. hope this kind of explains it better.

[Guest]

Oh god that is painful to try to read.

 

 

sentence structure, paragraph usage, ....

 

 

In all seriousness, a few commas and a couple periods might help make a bit more sense of this

[Oscar R.]

Oh god that is painful to try to read.

 

 

sentence structure, paragraph usage, ....

 

 

In all seriousness, a few commas and a couple periods might help make a bit more sense of this

 

My mistake was going back and trying to read it over and over again in an attempt to understand it.... I think my eyes actually started to bleed, LOL.

 

Terry, it sounds like you guys have some custom applications there that use tools and operations in a certain way through different jobs.

My solution would be that you create a custom "tool" or "operation library" (or both) for each type of operation that you use often and have these all named properly from the beginning. That might save you some pain.

[SledGeek]

whew....it wasn't just me

 

hope this kind of explains it better.

 

NOPE....

 

The only thing I really understand is that he effed up the tool name and is looking for a safety to catch it. name the tool right and it's fixed , right ? Hard to say without knowing your "process"

[rogkick]

Is it the Operation Comments that are the same?

Are you trying to get the post to recognise that ?

[Matthew Hajicek - Singularity]

What I got from it is that for drilling programs, all tools are T1. This means that they ignore the duplicate tools warning when posting, but they want something that will tell them when they shouldn't ignore it.

 

I think the easiest solution without changing their procedures would be to customize the post. One way would be to use different tool numbers in the Mastercam file but have the post use T1, D1, H1 for all tools. Another would be to have the post compare attributes of one tool with the next during toolchange, such as diameter, tool type, etc.

[TERRYH]

Sorry for not using correct punctuation, or structure, I didn't know this was going to be graded.