Excellon Retrofit

[drk]

Hi ,

I plan to retrofit my 3 spindle excellon pcb drilling machine with a new controller. Because I have used pcb drilling and routing machines for some years now, I am kinda stuckup with the industry standard Excellon Drill files which are generated diretcly from sophisticated softwares like OrCAD and Protel. I am a a complete tyro with G code, dont know head or tale of it.

I am looking for some guidance in selecing a software controller which can take excellon drill files and provide reasonably good speed control for the three motors, control coolant flow, vacuum on/off etc....

I have electrocraft motors on the machine which I have already been able to run with my gecko 340s.

Spindles can be run with a three phase variable freq. drive from danfoss or refu.

Thanks

[Al_The_Man]

How about Gerber files from Orcad etc, are they more like G code in nature?
Looking at this link,http://www.pcbmilling.com/Examples%2...ta%20Files.htm excellon looks like it uses standard G code, most of the commands are standard, except things like C for circular aperture (drill hole).
Al
Edited

[drk]

Hi Al,
Gereber is more like the interface between a pcb designer on PCB CAM software with high end design tools and the PCB manufacturer using CAM like Gerbtool or CAM350 for PCBs, it contails the layout and tracks and holes and layers.... but nothing like G-code or anything like that. But you can generate a DXF, HPGL and other standard files from the CAM software

[drk]

Correction, the PCB designer uses PCB CAD.

Have checked the website you mentioned.
PCB milling is more for those who want fast sample to be made in house for "R&D" work etc.. and cant wait for proper ones to be made.

As for the G-code and excellon file similarity, well they are certainly not interchangable.

The way I look at it, the excellon file is much easier to understand cause
a. It contains and deals only with 2d work
b. It simply has the x and y hole cords. the z is usually set to move a fixed distance on every hole
c. The parameter " C " is nothing but an information regarding the tool's diameter. Usually it is a part of the decleration regarding the rpm the tool has to be run at and the travel speed of the spindle with that too loaded.

[Al_The_Man]

I guess what I was getting at is the Excellon file example in the link look very similar to G code mill/drilling, the M codes on a CNC machine are usually custom written by the machine tool builder/retrofitter anyway. So if you retrofitted a machine you would have to customize the M code to do whatever was required by that M code. The other aspects such as the C command is similar to calling a (T) tool change, and the tool offsets can be loaded at the same time, programs like Camsoft would probabally allow you to write the code required to simulate all the excellon style codes, both M & C etc.
positioning is the same for both, just specify the X & Y coordinates.
I have not seen retrofit software per-se that is aimed specifically for the PCB market.
If you wanted to persue the Camsoft route, they would probabally be able to give you some insight as to the possibilities, they might already have a customer that has done this already.
Al

[HuFlungDung]

Drk,
Do those sophistcated design programs only output one type of file? If you switch to a standard cnc controller, perhaps you can simply use a different post to output standard gcode instead of "Excellon code".

I'm pretty sure that Al is right about the Camsoft interface being customizable to accept whatever you'd want to use for machine code.

[drk]

Thanks guys,

Al: for the customisation, there actually is very little to do, its mostly go to the X-Y cord. in the list and the drill a hole, newayz there is little I know of in the G-Code world. I have a lot to learn.
for eg. I just learnt that DeskCNC and Desk PCB convert excellon( industry standard) to G-Code( global standard), im gonna find out more about that.
Got in touch with camsoft also, they confirm the use of excellon files on their controller package which costs $ 3000.
So how is camsoft different from Kellyware or Deskcnc or Turbocnc etc... which cost a fraction.

HU,
well the software allows me to export data in many froms including HPGL, DXF and Postscript.

[HillBilly]

At that price I can see how expectations would be higher for that product!

Darek