Tool in spindle memory

Hi,

I had this problem before, but managed to solve it somehow, but now can't remember how.

When I shut linuxcnc down, and start it up again, I need it to remember which tool was left in the spindle, but with the machine that I'm busy with now, when I start linuxcnc up again on, iocontrol.tool-number will be = 0.

And at the bottom of axis, will display no tool.

I need it to remember which tool was left in the spindle. Any suggestions?

Hi, just to clear up matters : seems like there was no problem, but what I suspect must have been the problem, is that I had a power failure before I started encountering the problem, so computer shut down unexpectedly, so could have been that the parameters and .var file was not being operating right. This morning when I started the machine up, everything was perfect, so remains a puzzle and concern to me as to what caused the problem, and if it might occur again in future.

Thanks

Unless LinuxCNC gets a terminate signal it won't know that it needs to write out state to disk.
So, on a power failure, it is likely that nothing will be written.

Okay, I'm busy with another machine now, and the problem is there. It doesn't remember which tool was last selected. I have under the parameter = linuxcnc.var, and file is there, but no memory of what tool was last selected. Any ideas of what I could look out for? I am sure just a setting somewhere, but my brains are stuck.

#5400 (tool number) is outside the persistent range (5161-5390) so is not saved on exit.

Parameters in the user-range (31 - 5000) can be made persistent by adding them to the linuxcnc.var file
linuxcnc.org/docs/html/gcode/overview.ht...:numbered-parameters

The first thing I would try would be adding #5400 to the .var file to see if it gets written on exit then.
If it does then a RS274NGC_STARTUP_CODE of M61 Q#5400M61 would do the trick.

If that doesn't work then some means of writing the current tool to a persistent variable might be needed.

I do feel that this ought to be built-in behaviour. I wonder of we can make it so?

andypugh wrote:
I do feel that this ought to be built-in behaviour. I wonder of we can make it so?

I agree - but I think it should be the toolchanger that giver the current tool number to motion via a HAL pin.
Then the toolchanger could get this number from mechanical means or by checking a file or data base.

Chris M