Submitted by Suhas L. More of Macro CNC Solutions
If an operator makes a mistake with an offset entry, the results can be disastrous. While it may not be possible to completely eliminate the potential for mistakes, you may be able to error-trap some pretty obvious error conditions. When making wear offset adjustments, for example, an operator should never need to have more than about plus or minus 0.3 inches in a wear offset (X or Z register). If they do, they’ve probably made an entry mistake – possibly typing 0.5 instead of 0.0005 – or 0.005, or even 0.05.
Error trapping this kind of mistake is easy with custom macro B. Consider this main program:
In the main program just before each turret index:
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G65 P1000 T0101 U0.3 W0.3 (Test offset)
T0101 (Turret index)
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Before every turret index, include a G65 command to call the testing macro the tool station number (we’ve duplicated the turret index word), the maximum wear offset X value (with U) and the maximum wear offset Z value (with W). With our example, if more than 0.3 or less than -0.3 is in an X or Z wear offset register, an alarm will be sounded.
Here is the custom macro that does the error-checking:
