A customer found a bug in the Tile Machine software when using Manual Punch operations and configured for dual forming presses. The Minimum Forming Tool Distance parameter was not being honored and would raise the Lower Forming Tools early under very specific conditions.

In order to manage the dual Forming tools the controller needs to know the distance between them, it needs to know how wide they are and where the forming presses fired last.

This bug would occur if the forming presses were fired using the Manual Punch input(s) prior to running any parts. The only time the distance between the presses was being calculated and saved was when calculating and running parts in automatic. If the distance had not been calculated, both forming tools would raise up early.

The solution to this problem was to do the same calculations at the start of a Manual Punch operation so that the software could calculate properly where to raise the forming tools.