[Chi-town CNC]

I ended up needing to help my lathe buddies so I wrote a bunch of templates for the TL2 and SL20. The templates were tailored to what we all needed, and eliminated all of that crap code that you have to edit every time you use a template. I made the time (my own time) to design the templates. I'd say there is a 20 hour learning curve for someone with Cad experience and PC "basic" or NC Macro programming experience.

The speed bumps are actually drawing your template and learning the macro language used to make the simple calculations. I used bobcad (any simple cad or even graph paper would work) to make the graphic template. There are complex calculations you can work with (trig) but I never got past the simple stuff. Haas has an 80 character limit so sometimes you need to have a macro machine to output the actual code you desire. (when you get crazy with multi line threading and so on)

Just save a copy of your O9997 program or dupicate it as O9998 etc then go to town on O9997 which is the active VQC that gets read on the control.

I added templates for my company like: OD and ID notch, cutoff with radius on backside or cham on backside, Macro option enabled threading for metric or standard where the operator inputs Dia, Pitch and Z (yeah thats all!) And I added a "front 45" for bores so the operator can define a chamfer at the beginning of a bore.

I offered the code on ebay (its still up there) and I offer support, but no one seems to look much and I've only had a couple buyers in many months. I would put it up for free, but I figured I'd charge 50 bucks for support (which I think is worth it!)

Vqc is one of those things that you don't just learn in a day, but it sure is fun to tinker with and it just takes time reading and experimenting with.

Well worth it! I bet that machine isn't going anywhere anytime soon!

I'll be happy to answer questions because this VQC edit thing sure is a great way to make Haas lathes get running FAST!

-Chi-Town