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rdshear

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Everything posted by rdshear

  1. Todd Tracey from Fastech I'm ashamed to admit, but my G-Code skills aren't all that high. We program strictly conversational heidenhain. If I remember right, the I,J,K make up incremental moves Vs. Absolute with R. I, J, K, is similar to what is being output from our post in places and R in other. For the Helix moves, an absolute circle center is defined ( CC X+0 Y+0) then an incrementally angular move from the current cutter position to an absolute Z depth. (CP IPA-14.673 Z-1.9685 DR- RL) - Circular_Polar_move Incremental_Polar_Angle-14.673 Z-1.9685 Direction_of_Rotation- Right_Line_comp. Now once it gets to the bottom of the pockets it all goes absolute. Hockey Guy™ The settings in my control def are pretty good for the most part, but the minimum arc radius is set to 0.0001. We could try bumping that up, but I don't know how it would effect surface finishing paths.
  2. I played with the filter settings and that changed the code generated to eliminate that move to X zero at the bottom prior to the finish pass. Filtering was off in the original path. The part of this that messes with my head is the fact that we never saw it coming. I don't normally see a difference in the way the programs run on the mill vs. what I see in backplot or verify. Are the filter settings the best way to go about this or is there another more certain way?
  3. The machine is a Stanko Horizontal bar mill with a Heidenhain 426 control.
  4. Today we had an unusual issue arise where a program that had passed verify and backplot in Mastercam X6, crashed at the machine. The program was helical milling an open bottom pocket perimeter to a given depth. Everything worked fine until the tool reached the depth and then the program wanted to move the tool to X zero to begin the bottom finishing pass. When it got to this point, the machine tried to travel a full circle to get to X zero which didn't work. Here is a snippet of the code in the offending area: 9142 CC X+0 Y+0 9143 CP IPA-14.701 Z-1.956 DR- RL 9144 CC X+0 Y+0 9145 CP IPA-14.701 Z-1.957 DR- RL 9146 CC X-.472 Y-1.7993 9147 CP IPA+179.99 Z-1.9607 DR+ RL 9148 CC X+0 Y+0 9149 CP IPA+29.399 Z-1.9639 DR+ RL 9150 CC X+.472 Y-1.7993 9151 CP IPA+179.99 Z-1.9675 DR+ RL 9152 CC X+0 Y+0 9153 CP IPA-14.673 Z-1.9685 DR- RL 9154 CC X+0 Y+0 9155 C X+0 DR- RL 9156 CC X+0 Y+0 9157 C X-.3647 Y-1.3901 DR- RL 9158 CC X-.472 Y-1.7993 9159 C X-.5794 Y-2.2086 DR+ RL 9160 CC X+0 Y+0 9161 C X+.5794 DR+ RL 9162 CC X+.472 Y-1.7993 9163 C X+.3647 Y-1.3901 DR+ RL 9164 CC X+0 Y+0 9165 C X+.0007 Y-1.4372 DR- RL 9166 CC X+.0009 Y-1.8347 9167 C X-.2803 Y-1.5537 DR+ RL 9168 L X+.0009 Y-1.8347 R0 9169 L Z+5 R0 F MAX /9170 STOP M9 and an illustration of the part. The pocket that posed the problem is the center bottom one. What I think happened is a rounding error between where Mastercam thought the tool would be Vs where the mill ended up. Watching backplot, Mastercam was 0.0007 away from X zero when it got to the equivalent of line 9153. Thus making the move to X zero would move the cutter that 7 tenths to begin the finish pass. I think the mill was past that point because of all the incremental moves and possible rounding and had to make a full circle to get back to X zero. My questions: Where would I turn off incremental polar angular moves so the numbers are absolute? Would using toolpath filtering help or be the best way to 'fix' this? Our original post was passed to us from an old contact about 10 years ago and has been updated very little (only as needed) to keep it running with current Mastercam versions. Could this be a post issue? Would the control definition setting for End point checks (No rounding - break arc on failure) help? Just trying to come up with a way to prevent this from happening again. Thanks for any and all help, Rick
  5. I have Mastercam X5 MU1. Installed verisurf on my pc so I could familiarize myself a bit more with it during some slower times. After installing Verisurf, my operations manager now defaults to the Verisurf Measure tab instead of the Mastercam Toolpaths tab. Is there any way to change that back to where the Toolpaths tab is the default? Thanks, Rick
  6. Jack... LOL I was just checking a model from our eng. dept. to the drawing before I programmed it. Threw me at first. At 3 decimal places, it says what I would expect 216.000. I even went decimal out 8 decimal places to see if it was just a little off.. got 216.00000000. It's probably an interpretation thing from the model, I just thought it was funny though.
  7. Really... not 18 feet That made me chuckle a bit
  8. You could try to create a manual spline between the points then simplify that to an arc. That may get you pretty close?? Just an idea, not sure how well it will work..
  9. I'm not concerned with waiting until it's completely through it's beta cycle to final release. However, I think when it begins to near final release, it'd be nice to make public what the new improvements are especially to those on maintenance. I'm just glad I was there while the peak was available. It gave me a taste of things to come.
  10. The vanishing link provided a good read. Left me eager to see X5 I'm Looking forward to it being finished.
  11. If you're wanting to create PDF's and have Microsoft Office, there is a free download for office to create PDF's directly from it. That's what we use to create PDF versions of our setup sheets so they guys on the floor can bring them up without having to have office installed on all the pc's. Don't know if that helps any or not... Rick
  12. Not a problem John, I kinda figured it would be like finding a the proverbial needle in a haystack. But I figured it was worth a shot. What will most likely end up happening is my boss will have me develop the post like they did for another of our machines here (VTL with a mill control instead of a lathe control). If that happens, I'll probably be on here asking the experts for help off and on... As you guys are definately the ultimate source for Mastercam knowledge.
  13. If I came across poorly in the last post, I apologize. After re-reading it today, I could see how it could have been taken that way. I do appreciate the offer for help. Mastercam GURU, I believe you are correct as far as the mill controls go. With this lathe we have, the programs have a .nc extension. They start with a %filename.nc and end with an END statement. The basic G-Codes are standard, but setup codes, cycle codes, etc.. are not neccesarily so. The book calls out the standard as DIN 66025/ISO 6983. Thats why I was looking more for another machine that uses this standard so that I could pass the info to our reseller in case they've worked on a post for something similar to our machine in the past. It could possibly save us time and/or money if we opt to have them develop one for us. Thanks again, Rick
  14. The Heidenhain TNC-151 is a mill control. The lathe control on this machine is a totally different beast. What I'm really looking for is anyone who may be familiar with any other lathe that uses the DIN 66025/ISO 6983 standard. Apparently this standard is somewhat common in Europe... Not so much here though
  15. As some of you may know, last year we purchased a new (Large) lathe. The lathe has a Heidenhain 4110 Manual Plus control (Basic 2 axis with 4 position turret). We are now at a point where we want to program to that machine with Mastercam. I have contacted our reseller to see if they had any exposure to a post for this control. They said they hadn't but we could purchase a custom written post and they would get it develped for us. I have done post re-writes/mods before and can do so, however I'd like a good starting ground. I have downloaded the mplmaster post and while it is great, it seems to follow the Fanuc G-Code standard. Unfortunately this would require a large amount of modification to make it work without having to make big hand edits after posting. The Control on the machine follows a European DIN 66025/ISO 6983 standard. Has anyone had any experience with a lathe control that uses this standard? If so, could you post the make and model of the machine/control? Then maybe I could pass the info on to our reseller and they could see if they have access to a post that would require less modification on my part. Thanks, Rick
  16. I'm not sure it this will do it or not, but you could check your control definition to see if it's set up to output arcs. Here's a clip of how mine is set for one of our machines. Rick
  17. John, I really appreciate the help and I'll work on getting the info to you as soon as I can. This machine is relatively new and currently we have been hand writing programs at the control. I am going to develop a post for it but haven't yet. I'm currently working on another project but hope to get into full swing on the cable drum sometime next week. Work here has picked up exponetially in recent weeks and I posted in the forum trying to make sure I was on track when I "officially" start this project. Thanks again Rick
  18. Thanks Jeff, I'll look that over and hopefully it will work on our controll with little modification. Our control is a Heidenhain 4110 that the manual says supports "DIN Macros". I must confess though at being quite the G-Code novice. I can usually "follow" a G-Code program but often have to lookup what some codes are to fully understand them. All our machines except one here are programmed in their conversational language. The one we do post G-Code to is most often programmed in coversational by the operator. The new Ryazan lathe we have is usually programmed conversational as well. However due to a bug, the conversational threading doesn't work properly and we have to program that in G-Code. This is usually not a big deal for a standard V-thread. However, the "thread" I have to program is for a 16-1/2 Ft long cable drum with LH and RH grooves (81" long respectively) on a 42" PD meeting at a 4-1/2" long run out at center. The grooves are for a 1-3/8" dia rope with a 1-1/2" pitch. I'm sure this will prove quite the challenge.
  19. That was pretty much what I had read. I've done it the multiple point way and was hoping against hope that maybe with the myriad of lathe updates mastercam has gone through there might be a better way.
  20. I know this has been asked before but I couldn't find a good answer. Is there any way to cut a rope groove in a cable drum or an irregular thread shape where mastercam would step off a thread profile to turn a thread. Basically it would need to create a series of passes to rough and then finish a round profile (in the case of a rope groove in a cable drum) or a "chained" profile for an irregular thread shape. Is this even possible?? I would be using G31 or G33 for the thread cycle. Rick
  21. rdshear

    MU3

    Colin, I couldn't bother you for a copy of that list as well could I?? Thanks, Rick
  22. If you press enter after typing in the value, the apply button becomes active. This has caught me a couple of times as well in the same page so I now have made it a habit to press enter after every data entry.

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