Hi Colin, This worked beautifully, I can't thank you enough....I feel bad that you did all the work for me though. What am I gonna' do with my free time tonight ? I'm gonna' have to spend time with the wife now or somethin'.....or, I can take my dogs to the woods......hmmmmmm...... Thanks again. Mike

Hi Colin, That's awesome.... thank you so much. I will give this a go in the morning. I really appreciate you taking the time to explain what I need to do and why.....that helps me a lot. ......I'll never be a post writer and this is why....I did try to create a post block, and I was trying to use the "if cinc <> zero" to force the output, but I was trying to store the values in string variables that I created and that wasn't working so well.....when I wasn't getting errors I was either outputting all one's or only getting output for the first M45.........I was afraid I was going to have to learn about using buffers and like I said, I'll never be a post writer......this is really great, thank you again. Mike

Hi Ron, Thank you for the reply... ..I actually enjoy trying to figure this stuff out, some kind of "character flaw" I suppose.......I'm used to working 50 / 60 hours a week and our shop is on 40 right now ( hopefully not for too long )...so I'm kinda' bored....but having time when I get home gives me the opportunity to mess with stuff I usually don't have time for, plus I find it interesting....... This isn't a major issue but would be nice if I could make it work. I'm not looking for anyone to do this for me just a "nudge" in the right direction.......For instance, can this be done without using a buffer ? ....If I need to use a buffer...well, that's out of my league and without serious help I can probably stop right now.....or not :-) Good to hear from you Ron, hope all is well. Mike

...I must be gettin' old.....I remember when it was " Tripping over nickels to pick up pennies ".....I guess even idioms are not safe from inflation eh ???

Hi everyone, Sorry if this is long.To start with, I really don't know what I'm doing but I can usually fumble through and meet my needs without causing too much damage. This seems like it should be easy but I'm not sure how to start. I have a vertical with a Hass indexer with it's own controller. An M45 fires the relay that tells the indexer to perform it's next step. I've always programmed all sides from the top plane and used a manual entry when indexing was necessary. I proved my toolpaths using STL's and rotating them to use as my next stock model. Well, I don't have xform STL anymore so I'm trying to program using planes. I wanted to output my "A" values incrementally because my indexer is not capable of absolute and I give my set up guys a spreadsheet with their step numbers and index values, I thought it would be good to have the correct value actually in the program. So I added / rearranged the ptlchg_com, and ptlchg0$ sections as follows..... scomm_str, scomm_end, e$ scomm_str, "INDEX", cinc, "DEGREES" scomm_end, e$ scomm_str, "ABS VALUE =", pfcout, scomm_end, e$ if cinc <> zero, pbld, n$, sm45, e$ scomm_str, scomm_end, e$ Which outputs this.....I added the absolute value because........well, I don't know, so I could more easily make sure it was posting the incremental numbers correctly ??? ( ) ( INDEX A-90. DEGREES ) ( ABS VALUE = A-270. ) N85 M45 ( ) in my G code.......... which is all good.......... I only want the M45 when my indexer actually moves.....for instance, when there is no incremental movement, my post still outputs an "A" value... ( ) ( INDEX DEGREES ) ( ABS VALUE = A0. ) ( ) ....I put the line, if cinc <> zero, plbd, n$, sm45, e$ ...................I don't know if that's how I should have done this but it seems to work. ..................My question though is this.....In the first line, scomm_str, scomm_end ......... I would like to be able to output the step numbers for the indexer controller............so, starting with the first M45 output I would like to have the numeral "1" output in that comment with the numeral increasing by "1" for each subsequent M45 output.....as in (1) , (2), (3) etc. etc...........so my G-code would read like this ( 1 ) <-------------------------------------------- first M45, ( 2 ) for the next index, etc. ( INDEX A-90. DEGREES ) ( ABS VALUE = A-270. ) N85 M45 ( ) BTW......this is an MPMASTER post to start with.... So, I'm not sure how to go about this, any help would be greatly appreciated. Thank you in advance for even reading through all this. .... Mike

David, Man do I feel stupid.....thank you for taking the time to put up that example. All of those wasted hours creating STL's....Now I just have to tweak my post's a little.....I can't thank you enough man. Mike

Allan and David, Thanks so much for the replies, and David, thank you for the example. For as long as I've been using this software you would think I would know these things but I work in a shop full of verticals. I only have the one indexer, not a very good excuse, I know. I guess I need to learn how to create and use user defined tool planes, editing the post is not that big a deal. The hard part is our shop has been converting to Mazaks for the last 8 years or so and the mills are almost exclusively being programmed in Mazatrol. I probably write two mill programs a month...maybe....these days. I mostly quote now. Every once in a while they need a 3D contour or an indexer program and I'm the only one here who knows anything about Mastercam, it's hard to remember stuff........I know it's easier to create a toolplane off of a solid face if I'm not mistaken and that's something I never get for these parts. I suppose I can create a simple solid with faces where I need them ??? I will talk to my reseller and see if they can help me out with this. I'm sure there are tutorial out there. Again...thank you for the help, always appreciated. Mike

I don't know how to ask this in a simple manner. I don't have a true 4th axis but I do have an indexer. I have many similar parts, years worth, that are round with multiple features on each side. The wcs is the top of the part, the rotational axis is usually 1 to 2 inches below the top of my part. In the past, I would verify the first tool for instance and save as an STL, then, with xform STL I would rotate the STL from it's rotational axis and do a save as to correspond with my index number. After the operation that I just ran in verify, in my operations tree, I would insert a Manual entry with an M code to fire my indexer, and a comment to the operator as to how many degrees to index, and a comment to identify the index number (ex: 1st index )....I would then use that STL as my stock for the next side, .....and repeat as needed. If I had 20 indexes, I would end up with 20 STL files. How would I accomplish this using stock models ?? ...............I should probably program these as if I had a 4th axis with the z zero at the center of rotation but my owner wants all Z zeros on the top of the parts. I've never used the stock models but I can't find any way to rotate them. Any help is greatly appreciated.

I have a Quadro 600 that spent about 2 weeks in my new machine that I'm looking to part with. I upgraded to a K4000 which in the end was overkill for me, but.. live and learn eh ? ... It not the card that a K2000 is but depending on what you do it is a capable entry level card.

Hi Guy, No, it's 6061-T6, I just mentioned that it reminds me of mic 6 in how it's packaged. Yeah Thoob... I agree 100% ... that's why they don't let me talk to customers anymore Like I said earlier, this is a big customer and the owner wants to do him a favor with this one.

Good morning everyone, Well Kid, I think my customer is just a knucklehead. I have a thousand pieces of what I believe is like a mic 6 tooling plate pre cut into 5 x 4 inch rectangles. It is a Japanese product with protective sheeting on the faces with the name "Kobelco" on the sheeting. I think it's just tooling plate. From what I understand it is a setting plane of some sort for a digital photography sensor and the surface finish is "critical". We are told that any kind of liquid contamination will cause "blotches" and or stains on the surfaces after they are plated. If the sheeting becomes wet at all, we have to remove the paper, clean the material with a chemical they supply and re-wrap the parts with what looks like glad wrap. We don't want to have to go through all this, so we're going to try to run it dry. The kicker is that we were originally asked to bead blast the parts but they wanted a uniformity in the blasted surfaces that we can't maintain with our equiptment, so I'm sure these are being bead balasted after we handle them and before they are plated. Probably going to be chemically etched or run through an acid bath also. In my opinion, this customer is just being "anal"... but of course I can't tell them that. I've already spent more time than is logical for a $2.00 part, but as long as my paycheck gets signed every week I just do as I'm told. For all I know, these parts could be for the government Ninja, in which case they wouldn't be happy if they didn't cost ten times as much as they should. Hope you all have a good day. I've got a couple weeks before these go in. I'll let you guys know how it went when I run them. Thanks again for the suggestions.

thanks again everyone. Yeah Kid, that's what it will come down to, giving something a try, luckily it's not a very deep hole only being 3.5 x D should help, it's the (2000) holes that disturb me. I don't think I've ever used something like drylube on a cutting tool Guy, but even if it was acceptible, I don't think I can stop to spray a drill every hole or two. I've used a lot Guhring products lazyboy but the linky you have is broken so I'm not sure which one you're pointing at. I think at this point it's going to be the OSG SUS drill and like the Kid says, only way to find out is try. I'll try to post the results when we get it in the machine. thanks again everyone.

Thanks for the quick replies guys, I appreciate the suggestions. Hi Ninja, nope, can't use anything, no coolant, no oil, no kerosene, I'm thinking my best bet right now is an OSG EX-SUS drill ( OSG series 1100 ). I use them in stainless steels mostly. And yes, aluminum is cheap, the problem is machine time to run a test, every machine in my shop is 3 weeks behind and then there is the value of the job, not much $$ in this one and we didn't find out we couldn't use coolant until after we quoted it and the parts were on our dock ( arghhh ), Of course we will be altering our quote but the owner wants me to see what we can do to keep it cheap. These are pre-existing parts that we are just adding two tapped holes to. It's kind of a "favor" to a big customer, I'm sure you all know how that goes. Thanks for the suggestion Kid. Why powdered metal ? have you had success with these in aluminum running dry ?

Hi Dan, Thanks for the reply. I looked at Emuge for taps and thread mills but they don't make drills ( to my knoledge ).. They do make a "thriller" , drill and thread mill combination tool but I would need thru the spindle air to run it dry in aluminum, not to mention it's $410. ( list ) which is a bit pricey for (2000) holes. Mike

Hi, Is anyone succesfully drilling 6061 aluminum without coolant and if so can I ask what type of drills you are using ? I have to drill and thread mill (2000) M4 x 0.7 holes with a thread depth of 8mm in 6061-T6 and I have to keep the parts dry. I'm not too concerned with the thread milling aspect but quite honestly, I've talked to tooling "experts" from OSG, Guhring, and SGS and I'm not very confident in the information I've recieved. I was hoping someone with real world experience might offer some insight. This operation will be in a horizontal with a 15000 RPM spindle, I do not have thru the spindle air. If anyone is tapping aluminum dry that would be good but I figured that's a no go, so I'm assuming thread milling is the only option. As always, I would greatly appreciate any insight you could share, thanks ahead of time. regards, Mike