RT rotation at inspection start

[[Pa...]]

Quick story: Our RT (an ancient RT-05; no longer supported) is rarely used.  We sometimes go an entire calibration cycle (12 months) without use.  The result is that when the calibration techs arrive, they always need to run the RT in a warmup loop for a long time or it will fail as found.  Obviously this means that in the rare case I do use it between calibrations, I'm not confident that it's still in the same condition as it was when calibrated.

The suggested remedy is to rotate the RT forward and back a couple of times at the beginning of our stylus qualification programs, meaning the RT is indexed 4 or 5 times each week.

I don't know just how to do this.  A homing run is not appropriate as the table likely isn't used or moved between stylus qualifications; I don't believe it will move if it's already "home".

Can anyone point me in the right direction?  I assume PCM is the way to do this.  I'm sure I'm not the only one frustrated I can't find any PCM syntax dealing with the RT except to return current RT data.

[[Pa...]]

This worked for me.  I'm sure there's a neater cleaner way to do this but as we know PCM functions lists don't exist.  I went through 3 such lists including the one that appears here on the forum occasionally; none included these rotary commands.  I needed to implement a solution this weekend.  I used this as a postsetting to run at the end of our 3 main qualification routines.  Beneath this code are the two rotary movement commands I found digging around.  I can't comment on the differences as I did not test.  I can say that rotateWithDriveFree(rad(0.0)) specifies an absolute position, not a relative distance to rotate.  This is why I chose rotations just under 180° from the previous rotation, so I could have control over rotation direction.  I read that rotateAbsolute(rad(0)) will give a prompt to ensure the stylus system is clear of obstacles. rotateWithDriveFree(rad(0.0)) did not prompt, it just went for it.

rotateWithDriveFree(rad(0.0))
rotateWithDriveFree(rad(179.0))
rotateWithDriveFree(rad(358.0))
rotateWithDriveFree(rad(178.0))
rotateWithDriveFree(rad(357.0))
rotateWithDriveFree(rad(177.0))
rotateWithDriveFree(rad(90.0))
rotateWithDriveFree(rad(0.0))
rotateWithDriveFree(rad(0.0))
rotateWithDriveFree(rad(179.0))
rotateWithDriveFree(rad(358.0))
rotateWithDriveFree(rad(178.0))
rotateWithDriveFree(rad(357.0))
rotateWithDriveFree(rad(177.0))
rotateWithDriveFree(rad(90.0))
rotateWithDriveFree(rad(0.0))

 

rotateAbsolute(rad(0))

rotateWithDriveFree(rad(0.0))