Thank you. Found & fixed, & then broke a few other things, centerdrills mostly, & then fixed again. So it goes.
We've a Hardinge VMC1000 w/ 3-axis spindle, Fanuc OM.
Two new problems and a quick question:
- If I enable CNC compensation in the toolpath edit definition->NC tab, camworks will use G41/2, put out the toolpaths fine, but instead of 'D (tool diameter variable)' it does 'H (tool diameter variable).' Which would be rather nasty for the holder. It's doubly inconvenient because we recently got an order of undersized carbide endmills (pretty consistently .002-.003 too narrow), which would be almost trivial to work around with CNC compensation. It's not much work to use toolpath compensation and tell camworks the proper diameter, but it means that the program files are customized for a specific endmill: Even though our shop does predominately limited-run speciality work (2-4 of the same part, or less), we hang on to all of our old programs.
- In UPG, there's a section to add gcode for a program stop. But there's nothing for restarting a program: If the program stop falls in between two operations with the same tool, camworks doesn't add anything to restart the spindle, reset tool height offset, etc; I had a pretty embarassing crash, all feeding in Z, pushing a brand new carbide endmill completely up into the holder, holder hitting the part... while aircutting two inches up.
I added GCode to the program stop section to restart the spindle/coolant and reselect the tool, which looked as though it would work (put out the right tool number), but I couldn't get the height offset in the right place; it seemed that I was starting to hardcode something that should really be more fluid if you're going to the trouble of using CAM. And besides that, I don't really want random tool lines without a tool comment, and for whatever reason the tool number was right but the tool comments would not show up. It really seems as though there should either be another section for program start, or some way to force a gratiutious tool change at the start of a feature. The workaround to date has just been to reorganize operations until the tool after the stop is different from the tool before the stop.
- Finally, where do you tell camworks what work coordinates to use? It's chosen G54 with a vengeance.
thanks again,
--gv.  |