Hi.
Using EC V12.0, controller is Fanuc 15 or 18.
I like output in angular interpolation to be expressed in angles, but cannot find a way to "convince" Edgecam to create that output.

Example:
G0X5.Z2.
G1 Z0
X10.
X20.Z-5.
Etc.

I would like output like this:
...
X10.
,A135.X20.
etc.

Can it be done?

I do not have V12, but it sounds like you want to use polar coordinates. However, your example seems to show using an A-axis instead of an angle. I could be confused though.

I makes it more difficult to help when we have to guess what your doing.

I assume this is for a Lathe because you program shows X Z moves. Is that correct? And you're trying to do rotary contouring? And the "A" axis in your example is supposed to be the lathe spindle? So how can we help if you don't tell us these things?

Mike Mattera

Hi Kai DK,
Its a lathe and your trying to output drawing dimentions/angles as drawn. so ,A135.X20. is turn at 135 degrees up to 20mm dia.
This type of programming is really for manual input at machine to make operators job easier as he can input drawing angles without having to work out dim,s using trig.
To actually get a cam program to do this is a lot harder, cam progs are very good at one thing and that is number crunching, in fact i would say a lot of mistakes are due to trying to get a cam to output a format as a machine cycle i.e. G70,G71,G73,G83 and all the other well known cycles, whereas if the program was all X,Z moves it would run pretty well spot-on (al-though it does not make it easy to read/alter manually).
So to answer question Yes it probably can output angles (with some interagative post processor programming) but if your programming on edgecam my question to you is Why bother!

Regards
Steve

Hi.
Swarfmaker, you are spot on!
It's simple 2-axis lathe turning.
I'm thinking oldfashioned, me need to be able to make simple changes manually, I'm not skilled enough to make a correct output by postproc. to run generated proggys.
I get the point, though.

To rewrite the example, it would be something like this:
...
X10.
[angular 45° to] X20.
etc...

....but no need to do more, to me. the problem is solved.

Happy new year.

i think it is called direct drawing input, it should be in the fanuc manual

..that's direct drawing output. It's good for manual programming, but a CAM system is going to really struggle with it.

Edgecam isn't realy set up to output it AFAIK. To be honest, if you can get your post processor spot-on, it won't really matter what the output looks like - longhand, direct drawing, or canned cycles - because it'll be correct and you'll not need to do any manual edits or even care what's going on inside the machine! It takes a long while to get your postpro to that point, and even longer to gain that much confidence in it, but I think that's where your efforts are best spent rather than trying to force it to output exactly what you'd write by hand.

J