Newbie- post processor tutorials?

[daffyff]

I do a lot of 3d work, and the g-code generated can be pretty meaty, and usually exceeds the memory on the FANUCs i'm running on. The solution to this is running the 3d programs from the card which can be called up with an M198, rather than an M98. The card can't be edited at the machine which can be tiring if you want to tweak the speeds and feeds.

I'm not necessarily asking for this to be done for me, but for a point in the right direction, or a link to some tutorials would be nice. I don't mind doing the work, and actually like tweaking code, but i have no idea where to look for this kind of editing.

What i'm looking to do is have an option (i figure a misc integer) to start a tool in the main program, with a safe start block, spindle speed, etc, but have the entire toolpath placed in a subprogram.

Example

%
O2432
N1 G0 G80 G49 G91 G28 Z0
T1M6
(1/4" BALL ENDMILL)
G0G90G54X0Y0S8000M3
G43H1Z.1M8
M198P1
G0Z.1
M5
M9
G0G91G28Z0
M01
N2 G0 G80 G49 G91 G28 Z0
T2M6
(1/2 3FLT ENDMILL)
G0G90G54X0Y0S8000M3
G43H2Z.1M8
G1Z-.2F90.
M98P2433
G1Z-.4
M98P2433
M98P2434
.
.
G0Z.1
M5
M9
G0G91G28Z0
M01
N3 G0 G80 G49 G91 G28 Z0
T3M6
(1/8 BALL ENDMILL)
G0G90G54X0Y0S8000M3
G43H3Z.1M8
M198P2
G0Z.1
M5
M9
G0G91G28Z0
G30Y0
M30

O2433
.
.
.
M99

O2434
.
.
.
M99

O0001
.
.
.
G0Z.1
M99

O0002
.
.
.
G0Z.1
M99
%

What i have been doing is generating the toolpaths without subprograms, and than manually highlighting the code and dropping it into a new file. When dealing with thousands of lines of code, this can get tedious and confusing.

[Supervagazo]

What kind of FANUC are you using??? because you can run the complete big program from the memory card but you only can edit these programs with a computer, no direct from cnc.
Good luck.

[txcncman]

I have not seen a main program in the machine memory able to call a sub program in DNC. Have you tried on your machine that this is possible? If yes, then it is just a matter of writing the code. Might be easier in your case to assign a variable for speed and feed for each tool. The variable can be set or changed independently of where the program is executed from.

For example, in your program would read:

G97 S#101 M03
G01 X-2.5 F#102

Then set variables 101 and 102 to the appropriate values. You could even add some code in for error checking if needed, so if S#101=0 then F#102 would also be set to 0 so that the machine would not try to feed with no spindle turning.