Creating an ascending variable with SCM Maestro?

[Carlton_D]

Hi.

Anyone had any luck with the problem in the thread title?

Very easy to achieve with the old Xilog style extended G-Code, you could just have a loop with a LET command in the middle of it saying "L Value = Value+1" and each time the machine moved through that loop the value would increase. I've attached two screen grabs from the old Xilog of what this gives us.

But with Maestro there seems to be no way to achieve this?
I am trying to get a parametric program together that V-Grooves a panel based on a spacing variable that can be changed on execution, so we might have:

dx1=1000
dy1=500
dz1=18
Depth=2
Spacing=50

So we need to calculate the number of grooves - RD(dy1/spacing) - to get our start position and then add the actual mathematical spacing (dy1/number of grooves) to each line to get our next Y position.
But there doesn't seem to be any way to make that value ascend like it needs to.

The only way I have managed to get it to work is to have each groove a separate geometry and have the attached machining switch off once it runs out of Y axis panel dimension. But with 1600mm of Y axis and a desired minimum groove spacing of 10mm we have a really untidy program and a lot of equations to type into the geometry properties!

Apologies to anyone who hasn't used Maestro who is trying to make sense of this. It does use some very specific programming methods.

Thanks!

[samiki]

Hello!

you have at least two chances to do that.

You can either use the old PGM file. That is, you do everything with xilog PLUS and use the import to Maestro. The import always takes the parameters away, but this allows you to take advantage of the old program.
Another possibility is to make an advanced macro in the "C#" language. Here are a few links to these examples.

PGM import to maestro:


Advanced macro:



-Sami

[Carlton_D]

Thanks for that.

With the first option, I only have access to Xilog 3, not Xilog Plus. While the editor in Xilog 3 can do all that I need, when you import the file created into Maestro, it just brings in the tool path as it was last saved and strips out all the parameters, including the loop goto/label stuff that I need.

I need to look more into the second option. Going to play around with it now. I wish that video was all in English