Positive Length (Gage Line) Tool Library and Measurement

[CL_MotoTech]

I'm not a programmer, though I have done some programming, mostly web based stuff. I do run the IT department at my company and have a fair amount of system admin experience, but at this point I am a manager more than anything, that's been the case for 7 years. There is a significant cost associated with projects like programming my own macros, one that is almost certainly a loss for me to try to do on my own.

I don't really have any desire to use a tool against a touch plate to set my work offsets, that's what I have a touch probe for. Rather, I want to touch a tool to a touch plate that sits in a permanent location to log tool lengths. The work flow would be to M6 T#, load tool, click GUI that says "measure tool" or something similar. The tool probes to the touch plate, the machine knows there is a fixed distance between tool change position and the touch plate so it deduces tool length, which will always be a positive number because the spindle sans tool will establish the gage line. If I have to, I can input the tool length offset into the tool table manually, but I will have to produce a DRO reading of the effective length to do that. Once the tool table is set, I then should only need to probe the material to set my origins, tool length compensation should be taken care of.

I've spent a little of bit of time playing with the screen editor, it seems fairly straight forward. I've looked through a number of marcro's, that's a little less clear. Getting it all tied together is completely beyond my capabilities at this time. There are a number of options, I've purchased Gerry's screenset and will use that for probing operations. The tooling situation however is something I will have to work on if I am going to be able to more serious pieces.