Parking position

[derekmccoy]

I don't know if this makes sense to most, but my home position is not the position I'd like the machine head to be when it's not in use. My home is currently 0,0 but that means the head is in the way when loading material. I have to manually enter an MDI command to move it out of the way. Is it a good idea to have a 'parked' position? I know I can autoload Gcode with a button, but it seems a waste of an autoload for one line of Gcode.

 

[Ross]

Hi Derek, Peter has a video tutorial of this.

Plus i think you can assign push buttons to it as well. I haven't added buttons to my machine yet cause i never get time, but i want too.

I'm just to busy trying to finish what i was doing yesterday! Which was absolutely nothing !!!

From Ross.

 

[cncnutz]

Hi Derek,

One option that I use on my machine is I set up 2 inputs the Jog Y- and the Jog Mode input. I wired them together and connect them through a switch to the +ve of Masso.
When I want the gantry to move to the back I simply push the button and it will rapid back while I hold the button down, until it gets to the soft limits and stops. It will only move one axis back but that is enough to clear the table on my machine
If you want you could use a toggle switch and turn it on which would mean you don't need to hold the button down so long as you remember to turn it off again before you start machining.

Not as good as a park option and I don't know if it will help but it is something that you can have today.

Cheers
Peter

 

[derekmccoy]

Thanks Peter. Building on that, I could have that and add a timed relay. I just have to time how long it takes for the axis to travel from one end to another, add a few seconds and set it to that. I'll see what I can find.

 

[dara-holsters]

You can edit your post processor to make the machine move to wherever you want it to. If you open the post processor in notepad and go all the way down to the bottom you should see a line that says: writeRetract(X, Y); just a few lines up from the bottom. If you replace that line with: writeBlock(gFormat.format(90),gFormat.format(53),"X10.0 Y10.0") the machine will retract Z then move to whatever machine coordinates you have in the "X Y" part of the code. In this example it will go to X10.0, Y10.0. Just make sure you use the machine coordinates you want it to go to and plug those in. This way there's no extra buttons or wiring to mess with and it will write it after every program.