Tombstone Machining

[SlaveCam]

I love macros. Mastercam calls itself "the world's most dynamic CAM", but how come all the numeric fields in the program are static? Sure there still is a lot of truth in that statement..

 

Is there CAM programs that can inherently output macros when you type variable names into numeric fields, such as driling depth?

[jlw™]

I'd love to be able to put a #500 in the box and have it output. Heck, I think if I type booty booty booty in the box it should output it.

[Guest]

Slave, you could do that using the Custom Drill cycles and a little post work. You would just put the whole number in the custom field and in the post format that field's output. Relatively simple. That code I posted above takes numbers from the Misc. Reals.

 

jlw, You can do that in Manual Entries

[Watcher]

I love macros. Mastercam calls itself "the world's most dynamic CAM", but how come all the numeric fields in the program are static? Sure there still is a lot of truth in that statement..

 

Is there CAM programs that can inherently output macros when you type variable names into numeric fields, such as driling depth?

Not a fair assessment IMO. The dynamic motto refers to the HSM algorithms.

 

In regards the numeric fields being validated, this is essential to allow proper computation and proper functioning of the UI. Nobody find it useless when you type SQR(3*3.141592)*Sin(45) in there. Thanks to a very complex and robust function that works based on premises, this magic is possible.

 

As James said, there are other ways to achieve things and just because our way is not how it works it doesn't mean is bad.

 

Developers and UI designers have to trade off all the time in regards stability and functionality. You can do a million different things with an information entered by the user via UI, but only a handful solution are really robust for most users,and therefore these are usually the ones adopted by the development.

 

JM2C

[Colin Gilchrist]

I'd love to be able to put a #500 in the box and have it output. Heck, I think if I type booty booty booty in the box it should output it.

 

I simply activate a "Macro Variable Feed Output" function with a Misc Integer. Then type in "500" into the box, and have the post change the format to "integer", and change the Prefix from "F" to "#"...

[Guest]

Actually Colin isn't it "35"? "#" will disregard tje remaining stuff on the line no?

[SlaveCam]

Not a fair assessment IMO. The dynamic motto refers to the HSM algorithms.

 

In regards the numeric fields being validated, this is essential to allow proper computation and proper functioning of the UI. Nobody find it useless when you type SQR(3*3.141592)*Sin(45) in there. Thanks to a very complex and robust function that works based on premises, this magic is possible.

 

As James said, there are other ways to achieve things and just because our way is not how it works it doesn't mean is bad.

 

Developers and UI designers have to trade off all the time in regards stability and functionality. You can do a million different things with an information entered by the user via UI, but only a handful solution are really robust for most users,and therefore these are usually the ones adopted by the development.

 

JM2C

 

I was being tongue-in-cheek but apparently failed. However, there is nothing wrong with not being able to use dynamic macros etc. I do them by hand when needed.

[Colin Gilchrist]

Actually Colin isn't it "35"? "#" will disregard tje remaining stuff on the line no?

 

Nope, not since about X5. They changed the Format Assignments, to use a "defined string", where the entire Prefix (and Suffix) strings are wrapped in double quotes. So now the only special character that needs any kind of "different handling" is a double quote character. To output a double quote, you simply wrap the string in single quotes.

fmt "[#@$%" 4 fr_pos$ "END]}%^&*"

The above would be silly, but it would output just fine. The place I do use this quite a bit is like so:

fmt  "X[#5240+" 2 my_var "]"
fmt  "F#" 4 my_feed

In that example, if I assigned "my_var" a value of '4.5', the output would look like this:

 

X[#5240+4.5]

 

If I assigned the Feedrate in Mastercam to be "502", then activated "my_feed" instead of regular feedrate, the output would look like this:

 

F#502

 

So it is now fairly easy to handle Variable output. In fact, I usually just add a single switch, that changes the formatting of the 'feed' variable. I change the Format Statement to Integer, and change the Prefix String. The result is "easy" variable output. Especially since Mastercam already passes new Feed values for Plunge, Cut, and Retract Feedrates.

pvar_feed

      if mi5$ = one,
        [
        result = newfs (4, feed)
        result = nwadrs ("F#", feed)
        ]
      else,
        [
        result = newfs (15, feed)
        result = nwadrs ("F", feed)
        ]

If I then enter "501" for "cut feedrate", and "502" for "Plunge", and "503" for "Retract" (and disable 'Rapid Retract'), then I'll get:

 

F#501 for feed

F#502 for plunge

F#503 for retract.

 

Now, you also need to "enter" these values somewhere, so that's what I use the Misc Real Numbers for:

fmt "#501=[" 2 mr8$ "]"
fmt "#502=[" 2 mr9$ "]"
fmt "#503=[" 2 mr10$ "]"

Then I can set the MR values to any value on the Misc Values page, and output the three variables at the Tool Change event.

 

Sometimes, I take it a step further. I'll set 3 Misc Integers to specify the Variable Numbers themselves, (so I can pass the #xxx= number inside the operation), and 3 Misc Reals to set the actual value for the variable.

fmt "#" 4 mi8$
fmt "#" 4 mi9$
fmt "#" 4 mi10$

fmt "=[" 2 mr8$ "]"
fmt "=[" 2 mr9$ "]"
fmt "=[" 2 mr10$ "]"

If you "set the variable number and the variable value" inside each operation, then it's possible to capture the values inside 'prwtt$' using a Buffer File, and simply output a list of all the different Cut/Plunge/Retract values at the Start of File.

 

It is pretty sweet to start a program like this:

(UNIVERSAL RETRACT FEEDRATE)
#500=800.


(OP1=FACE)
#501=[150.]
#502=[300.]
#503=[#500]

(OP2=CONTOUR)
#504=[85.]
#505=[200.]
#506=[#500]

(OP3=SPOT DRILL)
#507=[8.56]
#508=[100.]
#509=[#500]

(OP4=TAP DRILL)
#510=[15.25]
#511=[100.]
#512=[#500]

(OP5=2-56 TAP)
#513=[0.0178571]
#514=[100.]
#515=[#500]

(OP6=CHAMFER)
#516=[38.55]
#517=[300.]
#518=[#500]

I get the "Universal Retract Rate", by setting the 3rd variable to "9999.". Then I add logic in the post that detects that value, and applies a new Prefix: "=[#" to the output variable, and I just overwrite the value to "500", which then uses my "#500" variable. I can also use "8888." for the Plunge, if I want a "Universal Plunge" value. I capture both of "Universal Feed Values" in the 1st operation, so they get output at the top of the variable list.

 

Each of the Misc Integer Variables gets assigned "#" as the prefix. So by combining the MI and MR value, you can have a unique Variable Number, with a unique variable value, unless you want to override with a "universal" variable value.

 

I've also setup a post to use a "scale" value for the feedrate, which is pretty fun:

(UNIVERSAL SCALE VALUE FOR FEEDRATE)
#500=0.8


(OP1=FACE)
#501=[150. * #500]
#502=[300. * #500]
#503=[300. * #500]

(OP2=CONTOUR)
#504=[85. * #500]
#505=[300. * #500]
#506=[300. * #500]

[huskermcdoogle]

Thinking along these lines, and maybe this can be done ( I am not aware ), but it would be nice if we could define variables, or use tables easily to drive tool path linking parameters, inside Mastercam.  Or reference values placed in other operations by standard named variable names.

[Colin Gilchrist]

There are other CAM Programs that allow you to use sets of Parameters and Variables for just this purpose, and so much more. I use two of them besides Mastercam.

[GoetzInd]

 

 

Thinking along these lines, and maybe this can be done ( I am not aware ), but it would be nice if we could define variables, or use tables easily to drive tool path linking parameters, inside Mastercam.  Or reference values placed in other operations by standard named variable names.

I've always wanted MC to do this. If you've ever used Solidworks, it handles this quite well.

 

Mike

[jlw™]

Now that would be pretty sweet.

[Cory M. Pio]

this is pretty good logic for only having to post a single part program on a horz

[RonC.]

Before I came back to programming with MC, I was programming using SmartCam and it had a tranlate and rotate w/ a sorting tool

so you could program the part once and translate ,rotate the tool path and sort it in the seq. , it was so simple and easy...

problem was having multiple program for number of parts run in tombstone...

 

Ron

[Codeworx]

When I worked at Inhouse I had the development team create an addon for one of my customers that handled tombstone machining similar to Gibbs product. I don't know where it ever ended up, as I ended up leaving IHS before it finalized. I did however play with a "beta" and it did what it needed.

[jlw™]

^^^ who dat?

 

One post, worked at InHouse?

[Sticky]

When I worked at Inhouse I had the development team create an addon for one of my customers that handled tombstone machining similar to Gibbs product. I don't know where it ever ended up, as I ended up leaving IHS before it finalized. I did however play with a "beta" and it did what it needed.

 

 

I'd be curious to see how far it got. Last time I saw it was summer of 2014. It didn't have anywhere near the power of Gibbs. The big draw back to this nethook was that it copied your groups, which made a mess, particularly if you ever needed to modify something. So if you programmed one part, with all tool paths inside one group, and you set the tombstone manager to make 100 pcs, the nethook would create 100 copied tool groups in your ops manager.

[Codeworx]

^^^ who dat?

 

One post, worked at InHouse?

 

 

Ray_D (not to be confused with RayD another regular on the forums)

 

I lost access to main forum account when I left IHS(tied to IHS email), and I have no idea what old email my original account was from so I created this one.

[Codeworx]

I'd be curious to see how far it got. Last time I saw it was summer of 2014. It didn't have anywhere near the power of Gibbs. The big draw back to this nethook was that it copied your groups, which made a mess, particularly if you ever needed to modify something. So if you programmed one part, with all tool paths inside one group, and you set the tombstone manager to make 100 pcs, the nethook would create 100 copied tool groups in your ops manager.

 

 

Yes it did do that, the team was supposed to revisit this, and give the option to output transformed operations insted of 100's of toolapths. No idea where it left off.

[Sticky]

Can anyone from In House confirm the status of this nethook?

[GoetzInd]

 

 

Can anyone from In House confirm the status of this nethook?

Many a time have I heard the legend of the IHS tombstone machining application. Would love to see something on it. Would pay serious bucks for increased HMC functionality.

 

 

Mike

[Sticky]

This is In Houses forum, it would be cool if they could post some info. I do have a couple videos of it they sent me when they were developing it looking for input, but I was asked not to share the videos so I won't unless In House gives the go ahead. It certainly showed some potential.

[Jkermit83]

When I contacted IHS they said the last version they had it working on was X8.  That seemed like a red flag to me as I figured a lot of people would want that nethook's functionality.  They said it could be updated if I wanted to buy it, but since they didn't have a lot of interest so it got mothballed.

[Sticky]

I think there are reasonable odds it was never finished, which is a shame. I think it is something they could make a popular add on.

[Watcher]

When I contacted IHS they said the last version they had it working on was X8. That seemed like a red flag to me as I figured a lot of people would want that nethook's functionality. They said it could be updated if I wanted to buy it, but since they didn't have a lot of interest so it got mothballed.

Good example of poor marketing. Nobody knew about it, so how can they expect it to be popular or known by users.

 

If IHS has more nethooks that can expand MC functionality like that and they are kind of exclusive, they should market them in the forum just like they do with their training material.

 

They could be making a serious money with it if you ask me...

 

CAMAIX does this kind of marketing very well... CIMCO too..