NOT Referencing the mill

Hi All,

Does anyone know if it is possible in PathPilot to avoid referencing the machine and still operate?

Sometimes with Mach 3, for not so critical items like woodworking. I would position x & y at part zero and shut down the mill at the end of the day. Then the next morning after reset I would just zero the x & y dro's and continue one with my project. I'd like to do that in PP occasionally, but don't know if it's possible.

Terry

Quote:

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Originally Posted by MFchief

Hi All,

Does anyone know if it is possible in PathPilot to avoid referencing the machine and still operate?

Sometimes with Mach 3, for not so critical items like woodworking. I would position x & y at part zero and shut down the mill at the end of the day. Then the next morning after reset I would just zero the x & y dro's and continue one with my project. I'd like to do that in PP occasionally, but don't know if it's possible.

Terry

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Hi Terry
In the settings tab select DISABLE HOME SWITCHES.
You still have to tap the ref buttons to change the state. I use this on a test PC but I don't think I'd want to do this on the machine. Don't forget to re-enable the home switches when you're finished :)
Step

Thanks Step, I'll give that a try in the morning.

Terry

So I think messed this up.....

I was able to get the machine to operated by following Step's advice and disabling the home switches, but after I hit all the reference switches, then reset the DRO's to zero, I de-selected disable home switches (so I wouldn"t forget them - LoL). But then the machine seemed to think it was at a limit and would jog in only one direction on any axis. Then I just gave up and properly referenced the machine and got on with my project.

I'm going to try again the next time I power it up.

Terry

My machine retains it's position after shutdown and through the referencing process. You shouldn't need to bypass referencing to get what you want, go to x/y zero on shutdown, confirm zero points on startup and then ref. It shouldn't lose it's position.

So I tried again this morning, the way Philbobb discussed, and it works fine.

In fact, I'm very pleased with the way it came out, and the performance of my mill.

As you can see from the pics, I set a small square in the vice to get an accurate corner, I then probed X & Y to set zero. Afterwards I moved the spindle 1" in X and Y, reset zero to that point and shut down the mill, including powering down the computer. When I powered backup, I referenced the mill than moved back to the zero and re-probed the square. The picture shows the screen for the X & Y distances after probing. Now I'm not claiming my mill is accurate to .0001, but it is close enough for me.

Thanks again to Step and Philbobb for helping me out.

Terry