movable edge stop

[Mark C]

I'm looking for some help in programming what we call a "movable stop". Usually it's added by the operator on the floor but it sure would be dandy to do it in MasterCam for them. What it entails is taking a 1/2" or 3/8" dowel pin in an end mill holder and moving to an X & Y tangent to the edge of the matl, whether it be saw cut or finished from a previous operation, rapid to .1 above matl then feed down .5" or so and then a program stop with an instruction to move matl against stop and tighten vise, then rapid up and start machining part of program.

This works great when milling ends to length.

I've thought this could be acomplished by using some type of drill cycle but so far I've been unable to think of a way to do this.

Any thoughts to point me in the right direction would be appreciated. I'm fairly comfortable modifying posts.

We're using V8 (hopefully the powers that be will spring for V9 soon) and a massaged version of the MP Master post.

Thanks in advance for any ideas!

[Ron Roderick]

Mark,

Try using the regular drill cycle and drill to the depth you want your stop to be at setting your retract points to the same value in absolute. Follow this with an M00 and message.

 

Just an idea.

Ron

[gcode]

I think the tool path command point will probably do most of what you want.

[JAMMAN]

Wow,I know this one. Set up one drill in your tool library as "locator", in define tool tab have it with no coolant, no rpm on spindle and to use "misc2" cycle. Set up 2 locators, one 1/2 and one 3/8 and they will allways use the misc cycle as long as you are using the "from tool" setting in job setup.

 

Edit your post and under pmisc2 depending on which one you used, you can define the z position and the M0.

 

pmisc2 #Canned Misc #2 Cycle

pdrlcommonb

pcan1, pbld, n, *sgdrlref, *sgdrill, pxout, pyout, pfzout, pcout,

prdrlout, shftdrl, dwell, *feed, strcantext, e

pcom_movea

# START OF CHANGES

n, "z-.5"

n, "M00"

 

And on this line.......

 

pmisc2_2 #Canned Misc #2 Cycle

pdrill_2

# START OF CHANGES

n, "z-.5"

n, "M00"

 

This allows you to show where to put clamps or whatever and you can have a zillion locations.

 

I'm sure there are a zillion ways to accomplish this but I used this daily for 4 years to locate stops and suction cups. You will need to create/arc/tangent to the line you want to locate in your drawing and put the drill cycle there. It is allot quicker than it sounds and works excellent. BTW, replace "z-.5" with whatever your locate depth will allways be, and remember the quotation marks! good luck............

[Mark C]

Wow,

Thanks guys. I'll give them a try. I think Jamman's idea will give me closest to what I want with a minimum of messin' around. Might as well make the most of MasterCam.

Thanks again

[JAMMAN]

OOPS- some irresponsible cutting and pasting on my part. In MPMASTER it would look like this-

 

pmisc2 #Canned Misc #2 Cycle (User option)

pdrill

n, "z-.5"

n, "M00"

 

and............

pmisc2_2 #Canned Misc #2 Cycle

pdrill_2

n, "z-.5"

n, "M00"

 

Now enjoy-

[Trevor Bailey]

Be careful with messing with the "misc2" cycle. On some posts, this is your rigid tapping cycle.

 

Just a thought.

[JAMMAN]

Trev, I looked mpmaster over pretty well before suggesting 2. Actually I was using another post and using misc1, but he said he was using Mpmaster and it looks like misc1 is used for something. It also looks like Mpmaster has many other definable cycles I would love to look into.

Didn't look at it previous to yesterday's inquiry -great job Dave. Your post intuition is almost intimidating!

[Mark C]

All we use is rigid tapping so I have the regular tapping cycle set up to do what we want. Misc 2 should be ok. I'll try it out this week and let you know how it works.

I agree that the MP master post is fantastic. All the posts we use for V8 (one guy is still using V6) are based on MP Master except for the subroutine post I got from the website

Thanks again for all the help

[Mark C]

Sorry it took so long to get back to the forum, but I've been pretty busy.

The suggestions didn't really give me what I wanted. I want something pretty foolproof and automatic, so here is what I ended up doing:

 

pmisc2 #Movable stop

 

pdrlcommonb

pbld, n, pxout, pyout, pfzout, *feed, e

pcom_movea

#start of changes

n, "M0 ", "(MOVE PART AGAINST STOP AND CLAMP)",e

"G0 G91 Z1.", e

 

I used the pfzout to pick up the z from the drilling parameters page but I couldn't figure how to get it back to the reference point so I used the incremental move you see here. Also had to add logic to not turn on the coolant as below in ptlchg:

 

[if sdrnote = sdr07,

next_tool, e

else,

scoolant, next_tool, e]

 

It works great! thanks again Jamman for the push in the right direction

[JAMMAN]

Glad you are out of the hole, your command of the all mighty post far exceeds mine, though!

 

I like it, I'll have someone try it out tomorrow.

Thanks for sharing-