I’m new to Tormach and I am trying to figure out the pathpilot hub. I am trying to design a part in Fusion and then run it on the pathpilot virtual machine. Are you able to simulate stock being on the machine? When I try to run a probing routine in any direction it never makes contact with the stock. I see all of my tool paths and I can run the tool paths but do not get a probing routine to work. Is this normal or can add stock somehow? I would love to find the documentation on this very cool tool (the hub).
Simulating stock, and probing in general you cannot do in Hub successfully. Probing requires something to trip the probe signal, and with no physical hardware there’s no answer to the question of “when does the probe trip?”.
Thanks Norman I appreciate the answer at least I now won’t chase that anymore. What is odd is that if you try to probe a work piece it will error out telling you that the probe tip width cannot be zero or something similar. If you go in and configure the probe it will start the probing cycle but since there’s no stock virtualized it never makes contact.
I’m no programmer but it seems strange that if you can tell the sim the size of the probe that you couldn’t also extract the stock from the g-code and represent that and probe it.
Thanks for the reply. Is there any form of instruction (video or documentation) for the hub ?
Also, FWIW PathPilot is never truly aware where your stock is; it just has a list of instructions (G-Code) and you can change where, within the working envelope, those instructions are performed by changing the work offset.
Thanks! I have been looking at those. The difficulty is in determining what is possible in the simulator vs real life. It would be great if Tormach could identify the areas that are not functional in the simulator vs the physical machine. I’m sure a lot of it is obvious to people who have used the software and machine a lot, but for those of us learning it, it’s not that clear. The probing example is a good one, I reasoned that it knew the length and width of the probe and the details of the stock so surely it would simulate it. Now I know that’s not the case so I’ll stop trying to figure that out. I am sure there are other examples of this that I will run into.
Roger that.
Out of curiosity, have you tried probing on your real machine yet?
Since probing is used to tell PP how big and where your material is, there isn’t a good way to implement probing in simulation.
Similarly, touching off tools with an ETS, or mucking with the door enclosure safety switches can’t be achieved in sim.
I haven’t ordered the real machine yet, I’m in the process of doing my homework and think the path pilot is a huge help with that. I think smart programmers could figure out how to simulate all of what you just mentioned. I think of it like an airplane simulator. You have to tell it where you are i.e. what airport, you have to tell it what the weather is, and what failures you want to simulate. I see the stock sort of like the airport and the probe as the weather. Even if there was an external interface (not normally part of path pilot) to tell it where the work is being held in X,Y and Z. Once it knows that the probing routine should work as you are already able to add all of the dimensions of the probe. The simulator knowing where and what the stock is would make it possible to crash by taking to deep a cut etc. etc.
Anyway, I know now that it doesn’t do it and that is very helpful! Thanks Davie!