Engraving Macro

[Wildcat]

Is there a macro to engrave on the OD of round parts or is this even possible due to the OD changing sizes?

[Mark VIII]

Yes, it is possible. Just project your text to the od. Create a surface on the od as a projection "screen".

[Wildcat]

Im talking about a Macro not inside of Mastercam. I would like to set up a macro on our lathe with C axis to engrave part numbers on the OD of parts. I have a macro that does flat engraving, just need to do it on the OD. Ive heard you can use G07.1, never used it and not sure I even have it.

[CJep]

39 minutes ago, Wildcat said:

Is there a macro to engrave on the OD of round parts or is this even possible due to the OD changing sizes?

Elaborate, changing sizes?

You can do axis substitution using a contour tpath
You can project geom and work from that, wrap the geom using transform roll or leave the geom flat and wrap it with within the tpath using the axis sub utility.
However due to substituting one linear axis with rotary motion the center of the tool needs to intersect the center of rotation, the radius distance needs to remain a constant from the center of rotation.

To engrave on a taper or work with geom the requires the center line of the to to move away from the center of rotation would require simultaneous 4 axis

 

Didn't see your post till after I answered, no got no macro for loading at the control

[Mark VIII]

30 minutes ago, Wildcat said:

Im talking about a Macro not inside of Mastercam. I would like to set up a macro on our lathe with C axis to engrave part numbers on the OD of parts. I have a macro that does flat engraving, just need to do it on the OD. Ive heard you can use G07.1, never used it and not sure I even have it.

 

 

Yeah, I did that, too. I actually wrote a serial engraving macro within Mastercam that can do exactly what you want. People are still trying to figure out how I did it

 

[Wildcat]

So, it works with different diameters?

[jlw™]

2 hours ago, Mark VIII said:

 

 

Yeah, I did that, too. I actually wrote a serial engraving macro within Mastercam that can do exactly what you want. People are still trying to figure out how I did it

 

Mark, I'd love to see it.

[Mark VIII]

2 minutes ago, jlw™ said:

Mark, I'd love to see it.

 

Yeah, can't post MC files here. I uploaded it to some share site a couple of years ago.

[jlw™]

You just gotta rename it to .txt or something.

I can send a Dropbox upload link.  I am very interested to see how this is done inside Mastercam.

[Mark VIII]

35 minutes ago, jlw™ said:

You just gotta rename it to .txt or something.

I can send a Dropbox upload link.  I am very interested to see how this is done inside Mastercam.

 

Let's just say you need to rely on "change at point" a lot.

[jlw™]

Now you really lost me, a macro inside of Mastercam that uses change at point?  Is this a c hook or a net hook?  Is it creating a new op for every set of characters?

[Mark VIII]

12 hours ago, jlw™ said:

Now you really lost me, a macro inside of Mastercam that uses change at point?  Is this a c hook or a net hook?  Is it creating a new op for every set of characters?

 

Ok, here is the way I did it. I started with a default of .125 tall characters. I used viewsheets with a string of 10 boxes the size and spacing of each character. On every different viewsheet was a different character. 10 of the same characters in line. So, when you tuned on all viewsheets you got all of the characters overlaid on top of each other each other within the box.  Then, I created toolpaths for each character. Within each character op comment was a jump code (YES this is one reason it is VERY useful to remove the parenthesis from 1008 comment codes within your posts). Think outside the box. And, within each of  those ops I used change at point to control the specific actions of each op and insert IF/GOTO commands within the program. 

Now you are all probably thinking, what If I want .25" high characters, or characters on an angle, or od, or whatever. What this allowed me to do was scale, rotate or do whatever, and just repost the code. Within the Fanuc control all the operator had to do was fill in what he wanted engraved within macro variables. #510 controlled how many characters, up to 10. #511-#520 are what you would use to enter the starting characters. Entering 99 gave you a dash. #509 controlled serialization.The program posted out the code to offset G59. The first letter started near G59 x0y0z0 and the operator was given a point as to where to place G59 in relation to G54/55 or whatever. Op1 was always G54, op2 G55, and so on.

[Matthew Hajicek - Singularity]

I wrote a macro that does this all in the control with trig.  Engrave numbers of any size in a line at any angle, or on an arc of any diameter starting at any angle, project the result onto a cylinder (so long as the cylinder is along X or Y).