Machine Offsets Tab

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If you are using your robot to tend a Tormach machine tool, you may connect that machine tool to the PathPilot robot software to send commands (load a file, cycle start, MDI, etc) and check machine status. The connection to one or more machine tools is configured on the settings screen.

Connecting a Tormach machine tool to the robot causes a graphical representation of that machine to appear on the Main and Jog tab visualizations of the robot:

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The machine tool is used as a ‘collision model’ that helps prevent the robot from colliding with the machine or the machine’s enclosure. To enable this feature, the software must be told the relative position of the machine tool. This is done by manually adjusting XYZ and ABC offsets on the Machine Offsets Tab.

Collision models do make trajectory planning more challenging for the robot, and in some instances (a narrow enclosure window with a large tool attached to the robot) moves will fail to plan. In these cases Tormach recommends manually programming ‘safe’ waypoints and disabling collision modelling in the software. To disable the collision model, simply give the machine offset a very large value or values (e.g. X = 1,000,000 mm) to completely move it out of the planning scene.