Transform/Translate toolpath question

[cadmonster66]

What i am trying to do it is i have 4 plates multi woork offset 54 to 58 i can translate my center drill toolpath from left to right fine. Is the a way to lets say start from the right(G58) and translate a a drill operation back to the left to G54. I set my drill to G58 offset tranlate to left and my next offset was 54. Any way to get it to read 58,57,56,54

thank

John

Mastercam9.1sp2 thx

[J. Rod Rood Warmoth Guitar]

You will have to understand how exactly your machine uses work offsets. I have five different machines and they all read G54 thru G59 differently. Once understood, all you really have to do is call out the appropriate work offset in your main program and then call your subprogram routine (your plate part). You can step around your work offsets in any order you choose. Sounds like you don't have to use the transform function in Mastercam. I use the transform function in Mastercam a lot so I can mill parts in different orientations on the machine, but keep the part oriented in geometry the way I'm used to looking at it.

[cadmonster66]

Mr.Cam i understand what your saying just wanted once the centerdrill stops on right G58 wanted to start drill on the right 58 and work it's way back to left and so onback and forth for reamers and taps. I Can jockey around the program, But we still have Green button Red button pushers (if ya know what i mean, No offense of course )

Thx

John

[J. Rod Rood Warmoth Guitar]

John, sounds like what you really want is a dumbed down program, operator fool proof. You can easily accomplish this with parametric programming. Hopefully your machine supports this type of programming. With the Fanuc, it's called Macro-B. Anyway, if you would like some help with this, I can probably help you. I've been parametrically programming my machines for many years and all my operator does is push the green and red buttons.

[cadmonster66]

Mr Cam,

Would be very interested in the macros if you could help. Yes they just really know the Giddie Up button and the Stop Horseyyyyyyyyyy button and some offsets lololololol

thx

John

[Allan]

To make the offset increment backwards, in the transform toolpath set the transform type to Toolplane set the work offset numbering to assign new set the start to 5 and the increment to -1.

 

HTH

Allan

[cadmonster66]

Good call Allan thx to both you guys. And if at all possible still open to maybe a sample of the macro programming

thx john

[Mike Whitten CAD/CAM Contractors]

cadmonster66,

 

I would like to comment here. I can only imagine that you want to do this in an effort to save cycle time. This would only save a small amount of time. Time is Time! I realize this. Lets look at this. If the distance from G54 to G58 was 30" and your average program had 10 tools it would rapid back to the first vise 10 times. This would be 300" of wasted rapid moves. On a fast machine, this would only amount to about 20-30 seconds. This does not matter in our shop as we do not run jobs where this matters. Back 10-15 years ago when I worked in production shops, I used to set the posts up so that the machine would position the X and Y on the G43 line. This seems a bit dangerous but it is just what you may need. This means that the the X and Y moves after a TC are generally always free. You could also set up a mi switch where it was selectable and with a safety warning for this. I made up my mind that having cam software do this for me was to much of a PIA. I did use Geopath for many years and it did this great.

 

Just some thoughts for you.

 

Thanks,

Mike

[Mike Whitten CAD/CAM Contractors]

Allan,

 

Thanks for the tip! I did not know that one.

 

Mike

[J. Rod Rood Warmoth Guitar]

John -- Let me know what macro language your machine understands and send me a detailed explanation of what your code should do. I'd be happy to provide you with a sample program.

[cadmonster66]

Cam,

We just picked up at Cinn. Saber and arrow at a auction today dirt cheap (Nother shop closing around here ) i'll check at see what kind these machines handle. Get to play with them at the end of the week when we get the electric ran to them. Like i don't have enough to do lololololol

thank you very much for your help

John