CNC 88 Program Library

[wethackrey]

Gentlemen*–*
I was helping a friend set up communications to his Fadal CNC88 control today. We're able to load an active program using TA,1 as well as send the active program back to the PC using PU,2. We can load an active program from the machine's program library. So far, so good. But what we cannot figure out how to do is to save the active program into the CNC88's program library.

This doesn't seem like it should be a difficult task. Perhaps we've missed it in the manual. Can any of you Fadal gurus tell us how to save a program (loaded with TA,1) into the machine's program library?

[dcalp]

As far as I remember, once you've loaded a program it is "in" the memory. At "next command, type PR and "display programs" (I don't remember what number it is) and it should be there--

[GM81]

at the "enter next command" screen press space bar, and you should be in the program editor, then press "p" and you should get a list of options at the bottom of the screen. 1 is to switch program, and 2 is to display a list of programs. What you are looking at is the 0 word at the beginning and part of (text) on the same line. I believe if you press 2 again ,it will change the page of programs. find your program, hit 1 and type the number you want and press enter.

You can also use the PR command as said before.

[wethackrey]

Thanks guys. We poked around quite a bit in the PR menu yesterday and didn't explicitly a way to save the active program to the library. Saw switch program, copy program, delete program. I'm heading back over there now to take another look, armed with your information. Since my background is IT and not CAD/CAM, can you shed some lite on what's meant by "O-word"?

Thanks

[GM81]

O word is the program number, that should be at the top of your program.

Your program should look something like this

%
O2099 (program name or part number)
N5 T1 M6
N10 G0 G90 S9200 M3 E1 X-1.0 Y-1.0
N15 H1 Z.1 M8
.
.
.

so when you want to call up this program you would press 1 for switch program and then type 2099 and hit enter to call up this program.

[wethackrey]

Interesting... so the program number the CNC88 stores the program under in the program library on the machine is actually explicitly stated in the program code itself? Sounds like you need to be careful not to overwrite programs by duplicating the program numbers. I suspect the issue is that the programs we're sending with the TA,1 command don't have a program number in the code.

Is the syntax simply to put a number and name on the first line following the % line?

Thanks again. This is very helpful

[GM81]

Exactly, if you send out programs with the same number, it will overwrite them. I have never sent a program out without a number, so I would assume that is your issue. You might be able to edit one in, I don't know though.

That is what the first line is for, you can use ( ) any where in the program to make notes, but on the first line it will display part of that text when going through your programs in memory to help you identify them.

Try this just to get a feel for it.

goto Enter Next Command, hit space bar to goto the program editor. Press 2 to see a list of programs (I assume it will be blank). Press 3 to create a new program.

It will ask you to enter an O-Word, just type any number from 1-9999 and press enter. It will then ask you to name the program, it will already have the first "(" just type "TEST)" or something like that and hit enter.

You will then have a screen that only shows. N1 OXXXX (TEST)

press P again, and then 2. You will see your program listed.


I am still a newbie and might not be explaining this the best...

Note: when sending out a program do not have a N# on the line with the O-Word.

[wethackrey]

You're explaining it very well... newbie or not. This was HUGELY helpful. I'm driving over to the shop in a couple of minutes. We'll give it a go.

Should be an easy matter to maintain unique program numbers on the source files on the computer.

[wethackrey]

One more quick question... what DNC software do you use to talk to the the CNC88?

[GM81]

I use MasterCam, I am not sure whats built into it.

[dcalp]

for you dnc software, talk to your Fadal repairman (were we got it from) and ask for NCFadal- it works great.

[Paul in OK]

We use Dostek DNC file manaer where I work for all our machines. Works well, and if I remember right, it was not very much $$.