My Custom Engraving Cycle Comment Bug

[Guess_who]

So I'm hoping someone has an idea where I can at least start tracking this down. I'll keep this as simple as possible. I can provide more info if needed.

 

We use an engraving macro here, so we built into our post to utilize the MasterCam Operation comment to translate into our macro. For example, if I put 'PN 12345' in the comment, the engraving macro should post;

 

( ENGRAVE =  PN 12345  )

G65 P9970 A0. B.125 I116. J114. K127. I1. J2. K3. I4. J5.

 

And that all works great, the issue is, that if the comment has ONLY NUMBER in it, no letter, then it will grab the previous operations comment. In the following example the operational comment is '12345' with no letter at all.

 

N1 T1 M6
(FTN 22250000 - 0.25 ENGRAVING BIT )
( PRIOR OP COMMENT )
S3500 M3
G0 G90 G54
G65 P9998 E1 C-90. A-90.
X-1.544 Y5.1078
G43 H1 D2 Z15. M8
Z3.826
G1 Z3.526 F8.
G2 X.5818 Y2.982 J-2.1258
X-1.544 Y.8562 I-2.1258
X-3.6698 Y2.982 J2.1258
X-1.544 Y5.1078 I2.1258
G1 Z3.726
G0 Z15.
G65 P9998 E1 C-90. A0.
X.08 Y3.626
Z6.
X.08 Y3.626
Z-3.745
G01 Z-3.7535 F8.
( ENGRAVE =  PRIOR OP COMMENT  )
G65 P9970 A0. B.125 I116. J118. K109. I115. J118. K127. I115. J116. K127. I103. J115. K113. I113. J105. K114. I120.
Z6.
M98 P8888

 

 

Does anybody know what would cause this? I can provide info on the post as needed, but this engraving routine uses a bunch of code and I was hoping to be able to pin point it to a certain section.

 

Any help at all would be great,

 

Thanks

 

Ray

[Colin Gilchrist]

Where are you grabbing the comment? AFAIK, the comments process through the 'pomment2' post block. The trigger is 'comment$', as you are probably already aware. This "dumps" any comment string in the internal comment buffer, and processes it with 'pcomment2'. Based on the NCI Gcode value (1008), the comment is output.

 

You're obviously doing something different, so look at your logic in there, and see what you are doing to process the comment, or output the macro.

[Guess_who]

Thanks for replying Colin. Below is my comment section. The thing I don't understand is why a numeric value is treated differently than a alphanumeric. I know I added the pcomment4 section, but I don't remember modify any other section. At least not significantly. It was a while ago we added this engraving macro stuff.

 

here is the sengrave_comment format -

             sengrave_comment : ""         #Target for string

pcomment$        #Comment from manual entry (must call pcomment2 if booleans)


      if (modheader = 0), pcomment3     #RB 7-02-03
      else, pcomment2



pcomment2       #Comment from manual entry

      scomm$ = ucase(scomm$)
      pcomment4
      if gcode$ = 1006, scomm$, e$
      else, "(", scomm$, ")", e$



pcomment3   

      scomm$ = ucase(scomm$)
      if gcode$ = 1006, scomm$, e$                 #   added by RD 
      if gcode$ = 1005, "(", scomm$, ")", e$       #   added by RD
      if gcode$ = 1007, "(", scomm$, ")"
      if gcode$ = 1008, string1008 = scomm$
      pcomment4


pcomment4

      sengrave_comment =  scomm$

[Guess_who]

Colin,

     I went back and started messing with the supplied posts that came with MasterCam and tried to use just numbers in my comments. Apparently MasterCam will not post a comment that doesn't contain a letter in it somewhere. Could this be a bug?

 

It does not appear to be related to our engraving macro, but an issue with how MasterCam handles comment without letters.

 

Maybe someone else can verify this?

 

In the meantime, I'll go through and try a few other supplied posts to see if I can find one that works.

 

Thanks

[jaydenn]

Colin,

     I went back and started messing with the supplied posts that came with MasterCam and tried to use just numbers in my comments. Apparently MasterCam will not post a comment that doesn't contain a letter in it somewhere. Could this be a bug?

Ray,

I can confirm that MC will not post a comment if it only contains numbers.

I can't offer any other advice, but I can tell you it's not your setup. It's happening on my reseller supplied, TNC post too.

 

J

[Paul Decelles]

Read this:

 

http://www.emastercam.com/board/topic/25229-unable-to-output-comments/?p=173003

[Guess_who]

Paul,

          Thank you for the fix

 

Added this and all fixed.

 

commvar$ : -1 #Disable automatic conversion of numeric comments