I don't know if anyone would be interested but I just completed (well it works anyway) a G-Code to Fanuc Teach Pendant Program converter. It basically does exactly what it sounds like. You input a gcode program (currently only for flat cutting AKA using your 6 axis robot as a flatbed blank cutter) and the program spits out a TP program that can be directly compiled and run on the robot. This is a different sort of CNC program but still CAM nonetheless. It supports all sort of goodies like static offsets, position register offsets, different tools and work frames, and setting the head orientation. Graphical viewing of the path is there too. Currently I'm a little iffy on whether the arc correction is working right... What I mean by that is - Fanuc robots follow arcs based on start, end, and a third point that lies on the curve. GCode has a start, end, and arc centerpoint. You need to calculate the third point for the robot for each curve. It seems to work but some cases get improperly figured and I'm not sure if it's surfcam's fault or mine... Might be a tough thing because when I ran these sort of paths out of surfcam to my old gantry flatbed cutter it would screw up the arc corners sometimes too. I think it has to do with having very small radii on corners. The flatbed controller messed up the same way my software is doing. ;(
Is there any interest in a program that can generate Fanuc robot programs? I might even write a compiler to turn the ascii output into binary TP programs if anyone has a need for that (like, say, if you can't get your hands on the maketp program from Fanuc.)  |