Good morning everyone, have a question for anyone that has input on this. I am setting up my machine to do a high production run, and the customer would like the parts numbered sequentially. The only issue I am having is that they want the part number "Radial" inside of a counter-bore. Now I have watched some videos showing how to set-up the G47 (with Macros) but all the part numbers I have seen are in a straight line. So the million dollar question is; "Can you do a Radial Sequential Part Mark with MasterCam?"
Thank you very much for taking the time to read this and giving any feedback.
I am not familiar with your macro, but I had created such a thing in Mastercam that does exactly what you want. You can scale, rotate, enlarge put them in an arc, etc.
Then you just post them out to your machine. And control the numbers with macro variables.
Guess I am a little lost on how you are doing that? How are you getting your MasterCam software to talk with the Machines macros?
So you used MasterCam to create your lettering (Part Number), you then oriented the lettering on an arc. You placed that lettering on the model, and posted your code...but how are you able to tell the machine to create a sequential number with the lettering created on MasterCam? Dont you have to insert the lettering into the machine with the Macro settings?
Yup. I setup different levels. Each level had a number(or dash) 9x in .125 high characters in a box. IE:
LEVEL 2 =
222222222 (each letter in a box)
I created a tool path for each letter
in the op comments and toolpath editor I created the jump statements (IF GOTO).
So, in the control the operator would specify how many characters to post out with Variable #510. In Variables #511 thru #519 he would list each individual character he wanted. You could also do this in the program, but I left it up to the operator, since I did not care what he wanted.
I assigned the engravining program to offset G59 and simply gave the operator the distance and direction G59 was from G54, or 55 or whatever offset his main program used.
1 - create the lettering (Part Number) with the CAM
2 - create tool paths for each letter/number in part number
3 - enter the quantity in variable 510
4 - enter the lettering with variable 511 - 519 (or however long the part number is..)
5 - switch the engraving toolpath to a different offset and just calculate my distance from G54 XY0
those steps will allow for continuous sequential part marking along a given arc?