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After years of grinding it out on the floor the powers that be have blessed me with the opportunity to wrangle in our programming cowboys, slap a "department" tag on them and refine this into a high functioning "world class" programming department.... Yippy.
My hope with this post is to get examples of well-rounded programming departments that you all have been a part of.
What made them successful? what made them fail?
Is there specific training offered that can help improve the utilization of machine definitions, tool/holder libraries and setup sheets that will keep these boys in their (Mcam) seats. and not have to run in every job that gets posted to the floor.
I have already reached out to my local reseller and will be discussing options with them on Monday but seeing as how I owe most of my programming success to this forum. I wanted to get real advice from you guys as well.
Thanks for the time.
that's what I'm struggling with now, I've been spoiled with multi-axis toolpaths so I never run into this problem. Would it be possible with some long winded geometry modification through C-axis contour or would it have to be done with a multi-axis toolpath?
after trying to recreate the situation I now see what you're talking about, It wants to finish the depth cut before adding the finish passes in multi pass. when really it would be nice to incorporate the two as you said.
This is kind of on topic but not really, but it's an approach that works well for me that others might find helpful, or perhaps I'll find a better way through sharing this.
Usually I'll create sub groups within my spot drill cycle and label them for each set of holes.
for example I have 4, 3/8-16 tapped holes on the face of my part and 6, 1/4-20 tapped holes at the bottom of a C-bore.
That way when I go to create the drilling cycles all I have to do is copy and paste the specific toolpath then change the tool and parameters and I'm done.
I'll then do the same for the tapping cycle.
This has improved my workflow and programming time quite a bit in parts that have a lot of different hole features.
Yup, I got some good input.
The issue I have with some of the other forums is it seems to be a lot of commission based responders.
I'm looking for more of an honest review from a hands on perspective. Which, in my experience, this site is the best for.
My company is looking into getting the Polyworks inspector software for our CMM, we're currently using mcosmos which I get is not the most user friendly interface at first but it is definitely a powerful package. My question is has anyone here used Polyworks and can offer some pros and cons that they have found?
Thanks Colin , everything at this point is helpful. I've managed to make some decent modifications to my post to eliminate having to edit so much after the fact. Most of which is aesthetics, but even after struggling through what I figured out yesterday today seemed to be a little easier.
I'm currently trying to remove a single line "tool comment" note from my "GENERIC HAAS ST 4X MT_LATHE"
I've added the spaces between tool changes, the "N" numbers at the start of each tool path and the G53 safe retract at the start of each cycle, all of which I've been doing by hand through CIMCO. so that's a huge improvement and a big time saver.
my next conquest is to get rid of the "(TOOL - 1 OFFSET - 1)" in between my sequence number and tool info comment.
Hot damn! I think I got it
ptlchg$ #Tool change
pcuttype
toolchng = one
if prog_stop = 1, pbld, n$, *sm01, e$
if prog_stop = 2, pbld, n$, *sm00, e$
pcom_moveb
pcheckaxis
**added line here** " ", e$
c_mmlt$ #Multiple tool subprogram call
ptoolcomment
that seemed to do the trick, hopefully nothing else got weird.
@JParis - I'm struggling to figure this one out, I'm not sure where in the post to add the quotation marks to get the space.
I'm very new to post editing and the more I play around the more I'm learning which is great.. but also extremely time consuming .
I've tried adding it to a few locations with no luck, would it be before the tool comment in the "psof$" block of code?
psof$ #Start of file for non-zero tool number
pcuttype
toolchng = one
if ntools$ = one,
[
#skip single tool outputs, stagetool must be on
stagetool = m_one
!next_tool$
]
pbld, n$, *smetric, e$
pbld, n$, *sgcode, *sgplane, scc0, sg80, *sgabsinc, e$
sav_absinc = absinc$
pcom_moveb
pcheckaxis
c_mmlt$ #Multiple tool subprogram call
**HERE**
ptoolcomment
comment$
pcan
pbld, *n$, *t$, sm06, e$
pindex
if mi1$ > one, absinc$ = zero
if use_rot_lock & (cuttype <> zero | (index = zero & prv_cabs <> fmtrnd(cabs))), prot_unlock
pcan1, pbld, n$, *sgcode, *sgabsinc, pwcs, pfxout, pfyout, [if use_3d_approach, pfzout],
pfcout, [if nextdc$ <> 7, *speed, *spindle], pgear, strcantext, e$
if use_rot_lock & cuttype = zero, prot_lock
pbld, n$, [if not(use_3d_approach), pfzout], scoolant, pstagetool, e$
absinc$ = sav_absinc
pcom_movea
toolchng = zero
c_msng$ #Single tool subprogram call
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