Proto Trak question

[cleve]

Help, I am trying to program my new Proto Trak cnc machine. I am trying to program a milling event with connecting ARC events. One of the fields that needs to be filled out reads " z center: is the z dimension to the center of the arc; incremental is the form z end. I am using .65 in. radius on a rectangular profile. My tool is a 5/16 endmill and will be cutting to a depth of minus .1. The machine will not accept a tool off set if this field is not correctly filled. I cant figure out what they are asking for.
How do you calcultat Z center?
Cleve

[annoying]

Help, I am trying to program my new Proto Trak cnc machine. I am trying to program a milling event with connecting ARC events. One of the fields that needs to be filled out reads " z center: is the z dimension to the center of the arc; incremental is the form z end. I am using .65 in. radius on a rectangular profile. My tool is a 5/16 endmill and will be cutting to a depth of minus .1. The machine will not accept a tool off set if this field is not correctly filled. I cant figure out what they are asking for.
How do you calcultat Z center?
Cleve

Not sure the age of yours, but the prototraks I used were all from the late 90s to early 2000s. On those machines, running in 3 axis, yes you had to input a Z center of the arcs.

Assuming you are only cutting in 2 axes, the Z begin, Z end, and Z center are all the same. The thing I always did was just hit "0" and "inc set", obviously meaning it is 0.0000 incrementally from the Z begin

Another thing too, with the old prototraks, you do not approach to and release from tool compensation. You set it on from the get-go in any chain of events. You can not change from center to left or right, or any switch between the 3 while running any chain of events. But, you would still want to approach and release from your part.

To simplify inputting in a chain of events, once the first even is in place, you could simply put "0" and "inc set" (for that matter just hit "inc set") for the X begin, Y begin, Z rapid, and Z begin of each following event. This obviously tells the control that each even is starting from the end point of the previous event.

But, if you say you are cutting a corner radius on on rectangle, just use the "con rad" (connecting radius) in the mill event. It will put a radius between that mill even and the next event

[borisbb]

Hy, need some help. I have bought a Trak DPM with Proto Trak SM control yom '03. Everything works fine but I cant import nothing else but PT4 extension.
I already have Converter in directory but I cant start it. Do you have anything like this at your machine?
Thanks a lot. Boris.