Strange behavior when tool changing in different machine modes
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A colleague and I are building a machine that uses a process of depositing and then milling away material sequentially. As a result we have used the commands to change machine mode when we switch between extruding and milling. In CNC mode the machine behaves as expected. The tools park and take their positions from the tpreN.g command.
When we are in FFF mode, the tools follow the tpre and get their parked positioning but then they move their z and update position as well, to the last Z position before tool change.
While I can see this as being beneficial to a traditional IDEX or tool changer, there is no documentation as to what's going on behind the scenes with the mode switch. As far as I can tell the mode switch appears to only be changing the DWC interface. But from the differences in behavior we are seeing there appears to be more going on.
Since this is an R and D project we appreciate being able to use the FFF interface to manipulate the Extrusion Factor on the fly (we are not using filament).
The same goes for when we are using our mill we like the ability to manipulate spindle speed while it is operating as we are still determining optimal values for our process.We also use the same gcode file for printing and milling, as it's a sequential operation. This allows us to preserve our working zero without having to reprobe our parts between operations.