Helical motion in the post

[Scuba Jon]

Greetings one and all

I am working on changing the output of the Circle Mill/Roughing helical approach in our post. I am currently getting one G2 line of code fore each 360 degree rotation the helix makes. So if the helix makes 10 rotations on its way to the bottom of the hole I am getting 10 G2 statements with XYZ IJK components. What I would like to see is one line of code for the helix. I have been successful at this if I use Circlemill Parameters/Depth as an absolute number. What I can’t figure out is how to make it work if the depth is controlled incrementally (Defined by where the actual geometry is in space). I have tried the Prmcode #10029 (toolpath depth) but that is not giving me the right numbers.

 

 

This is what I get:

N430G2X31.1641Y-15.5319Z.8853I31.05J-15.475K.2147F20.

N440G2X31.1641Y-15.5319Z.6707I31.05J-15.475K.2147

N450G2X31.1641Y-15.5319Z.456I31.05J-15.475K.2147

N460G2X31.1641Y-15.5319Z.2414I31.05J-15.475K.2147

N470G2X31.1641Y-15.5319Z.0267I31.05J-15.475K.2147

N480G2X30.9359Y-15.4181Z-.0806I31.05J-15.475K.2147

N490G2X30.9844Y-15.3657Z-.1I31.05J-15.475K.2147

 

This is what I want:

N490G2X30.9844Y-15.3657Z-.1I31.05J-15.475K.2147 F20.

 

When I looked at the NCI output I see a pair of lines for each 360 degree rotation of the helix (Not surprizingly).

 

So my questions are:

1) Is there another way I can capture the final depth of an incremental depth in circlemill?

2) Is there a way I can change the way the NCI file handles the helix to only give me one pair of lines of code for the helix?

 

I am sure there is something simple I am missing to do this. Any help is greatly appreciated.

 

Finally, all the above code is propriatary information to the Boeing Company so if you use it to make your own helical hole Mother Boeing will come after you and might even slap your wrist (That was humor in case you missed it. Sorry, sometimes my sense of humor is a wee bit different).

 

 

Thank you for your help

[Alex Cole]

one method that would be a little bit different but I have setup for several people who have Horizontal boring mills is to create a custom drill cycle where you select the center location of the bore. Then in the parameters fill in the other data needed. Then in the post in the post block for the custom drill cycle you select you can setup the output that you need. The only issue you may have with this is that it will not really backplot as a arc but as a drill.

 

Just a thought for you.

 

Alex

[Scuba Jon]

Thanks Alex

It is good to hear from you again. I actually thought about using a drill cycle early on but decided to see if I could do it in the circle mill first. I am sure there is a way to capture the final depth on an incremental hole but I just haven't figured that out yet. I'll get it eventually.

Take care

Randy

[Alex Cole]

I bet you could do it using some tracking variables and writing the data you need into a buffer. Then when the op is done you would have to trap it in pretract or somthing like that and then construct your output from the data out of the buffer file.

 

Think it over and I bet you will find a way to do it.

 

Alex

[Scuba Jon]

Success

Well it took a while but I finally got it working. My goal was to take a helix move (in Circle mill/roughing) that outputs one G2 line for each 360 degree revolution and combine them into one G2 command for the entire helix. It was fairly easy to do that for a helix where the bottom was an absolute coordinate. The challenge was making it work where the bottom of the hole was defined incrementally (By where the actual geometry lies in space). I tried to load a word file to the FTP site showing my changes but could not due to our firewall. If you are interested in knowing what I did to make this work then PM me and I will send you the word file of the changes I made to our post. Our post was written for a Cincinnati-Milicron 3-axis gantry router using a Acramatic 950 control.