Hi all - new member, first time posting. A little background about myself: I am a high school technology teacher that has just started working with CNC machines over the past couple of years. Our school district was able to purchase Haas TM-1P VMC's and GT10 lathes a few years ago when they refinanced some bonds. I don't have direct industry experience in machining, but I pick up on things really quickly and have so far been able to learn anything I've wanted to do mostly on my own with help from a few small training sessions from Vincennes University and learnhaas.com.

On to my question: I'm not able to utilize my GT10 lathe to its potential because I've got a post processor problem. The processor I have been using that works is the G71/G72 post that comes in Surfcam. However, this post creates some problems and here is what happens:

1. It will put multiple M codes in a block and the machine doesn't like that. It should be altered so it only puts one M code per block.

2. On a turning operation in Surfcam, if you go to the turn control tab and select "both" in the Rough and/or Finish Cut option box it causes an error on the machine. I've been able to get around it for now by just selecting "rough" in that box and it goes away. The error message on the machine says the following:

NON-MONOTONOUS PQ BLOCKS IN X

611 G71/G72 TYPE I ALARM
WHEN G71 OR G72 IS EXECUTING AND THE CONTROL DETECTS A PROBLEM IN THE DEFINED PQ PATH. IT IS USED TO INDICATE WHICH METHOD OF ROUGHING HAS BEEN SELECTED BY THE CONTROL. IT IS GENERATED TO HELP THE PROGRAMMER WHEN DEBUGGING G71 OR G72 COMMANDS. THE CONTROL OFTEN SELECTS TYPE I ROUGHING WHEN THE PROGRAMMER HAS INTENDED TO USE TYPE II ROUGHING. TO SELECT TYPE II, ADD R1 TO THE G71/G72 COMMAND BLOCK (IN YASNAC MODE) OR ADD A Z AXIS REFERENCE TO THE P BLOCK (IN FANUC MODE).

602 NON MONOTONOUS PQ BLOCKS IN X
THE PATH DEFINED BY PQ WAS NOT MONOTONIC IN THE X AXIS. A MONOTONIC PATH IS ONE WHICH DOES NOT CHANGE DIRECTION STARTING FROM THE FIRST MOTION BLOCK.

I don't have any experience altering post files and to be honest have no idea where you even learn it. I am hoping someone out there that knows their stuff can help me out so I can get my students going on some better projects this next trimester. Where do I start?

Thanks in advance,

Marquis Songer