Give Yourself an M1 Break
from our friends at Tormach
M1 functions as a “break” or “optional stop.” A couple of well-placed M1 commands in your program can allow you an extra check to make sure your tool offsets are where you think they are.
Your CAM won’t typically put these in, so you’ll have to add them to your program after the post. Consider the code snippet below:
| % | (Program start flag) |
| N5 G90 G20 | (Absolute and inch programming) |
| N10 M06 T2 | (Tool change, Tool #2) |
| N15 M03 S1200 | (Spindle on CW, at 1200 rpm) |
| N20 G00 X1 Y1 | (Rapid to X1,Y1) |
| N21 G00 Z2 | (Rapid down to Z=2) |
| N22 M1 | (Break) |
| N25 Z0.1 | (Rapid down to Z0.1) |
| N26 M1 | (Break) |
| N30 G01 Z-0.25 F5 | (Feed move down to a depth of .25”) |
| N35 Y3 | (Feed move to Y3) |
| N40 X5 | (Feed to X5) |
| N45 X1 Y1 Z-0.125 | (Feed to X1,Y1,Z -0.125) |
| N50 G00 Z1 | (Rapid up to Z1) |
| N55 X0 Y0 | (Rapid over to X0,Y0) |
| N60 M05 | (Spindle off) |
| N65 M30 | (End of program) |
Inserting lines N21, N22 and N26 into the existing code give you a chance for a sanity check on your tool offsets and may save you from an unanticipated crash. If you want, in addition to adding these lines near the beginning of the code, you can add them in a similar fashion after every tool change command.
Once you’ve got confidence in your program, most controllers can be set to ignore M1. Otherwise, you can always just go back through the program and delete each line that you added.
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