Home Position 1

Hi,

The machine coordinate position matches the Home Position 1 for the tool change position, but trying to step reverse through the tool change says the HP1 is not completed. Anyone have any ideas on what to look for or what the machine is looking for? As far as I can tell the arm is at the zero position.

If I try step forward though I get the message, "ATC sequence is in Axis move inhibit". Which the Maintenance Manual says "An interlock is provided to disable axis movements while the tool change arm is not in the standby position." So maybe the arm isn't at home and that is causing the HP1 not complete message also?

Machine is a MX-40HA with OSP7000M.

Well is my shot, I am not familiar with your particular changer. But mine, and others I have worked on use proximity switches to determine the position of a lot of the components of the changer mechanism.
There should be a page in your controller that will allow you to see the logic states of all switches in your entire machine. You need to identify which switches are in the changer and check to see if they are either high or low depending on position of changer. For example if the tool arm is parked correctly (in mine the prox switch would be closed LED off).
My first guess is you have a failed or out alignment prox switch. Most Prox switches have an LED built in, so a piece of banding placed in front of the switch should illuminate the LED; indicating a functioning switch. Next step would be make sure it is close enough to its "trigger" to activate it, there by telling the controller --->tool arm parked..
Word of caution if you need to adjust it go slow, I have seen overly excited techs adjust the switch too far, that when the trigger comes swinging along it decapitates a 20-30 dollar switch.

Best of luck, D

Thanks for the info. The machine has diagrams on it showing sensors and I don't see any sensors listed for the Arm home position, but there still could be one I suppose. One pdf manual I have for this control, but a vertical machine, says that in the gearbox there should be pointer and a painted mark on the cam follower to verify that the arm is at zero position. So I might need to open up the box and see what I can see.

One weird thing that has me a bit puzzled it that the manual says that when you put the arm in the hand jog mode that the position display of the arm should flicker between 0 and 359.xxx, but mine flickers between 0 and 14.17x. Which is weird that 360/14.17 is 25.4, I wonder if there could be a parameter that sets that value to metric? I have no idea just guessing.

Well, I put the machine in Metric mode, and that took care of the weird arm position number. Then each axis was off home position by .002 to .003 mm, so jogged it back onto the home position and that seemed to satisfy the home position. Now the message stopping the tool change sequence from stepping back in is "10569 Tool change arm not in standby position". And I have also gotten a "10565 APC shifter position is in axis move inhibit"

As far as I can tell it looks like all the requirements for the ATC are being met. I was talking with another member on this forum that has been teaching me how to work on the ATC and he was saying that the APC could be holding it up, so I am going to start digging into that. The APC does seem to have something a bit wonky going on with it.

We had a similar issue where a tool was loaded into the magazine backwards, so the entire tool change was locked up when it swapped tools. We eventually found a parameter on one of the ATC pages that said "ATC is effectively HP1", which allowed us to step advance and complete the tool change.

Another thing I'm worried about is how easily accessible the coordinates for HP1 are on our OSP-P200M. If an operator were to fudge up the XYZ coordinates of the home position (for whatever reason), would something catastrophic happen during a tool change? It's just there in plain sight with all of the other 31 home positions. I installed the View Control app, so I may have to look into getting that set up.

Yeah, they are pretty accessible. Maybe there is a parameter bit to hide the home positions page?
You might want to copy your tool change position onto an unused home position in case it gets changed, and maybe take a picture of it. Just a couple of ideas if you are concerned about operators playing with it.

You can also set MC User Parameter (Word) to one to override the axis inhibit and move the machine axis to get to the zero position. Just pay attention when you are jogging since everything is overridden.

I did get the toolchanger working. The arm not in standby mode ended up being that it takes 2 tool changes, so the arm rotates twice, for the shaft to actually go a full revolution. I rotated the arm through a tool change and rezeroed the arm offset it and got it working.