Fanuc post processor & cut depth problems

[BrentHenry1974]

I have been using SC for a few years now mostly for cnc plasma. We recently started using a Quickmill Intimadator 120 for drilling holes. This is our first job we have done with it and we had Quickmill come down and train us to operate the machine so their guy did the g-code for this job. We will be doing more and more jobs with this machine. They are trying to get us to buy Mastercam to write the g-code for the machine. I would like to use SC. I have been trying to replicate the .nc file he made with Mastercam and not having much luck. So I have two questions:

1. The Fanuc post processor in SC doesn't make the .nc file look the same as the .nc file that Quickmill did for us. Should i be using a different post
processor?
2. When i make an operation for drilling and i tell it to make the cut depth, SC crashes everytime unless I also give it a pec depth of the same value?
Am i doing something wrong or that is how it is done?

Thanks in advance for any help.

[Les Newell]

That quickmill looks like quite a beast!

1. The Fanuc post processor in SC doesn't make the .nc file look the same as the .nc file that Quickmill did for us. Should i be using a different post processor?

Could you give me a sample nc file.

2. When i make an operation for drilling and i tell it to make the cut depth, SC crashes everytime unless I also give it a pec depth of the same value?

What happens exactly? SheetCam should not crash.

[BrentHenry1974]

Thanks for helping Les!!
I am attaching the nc file that Quickmill made for us and also my .job file from SC. As far as SC crashing, when I put a cut depth acts like it doing something but its not responding and I have to open task manager to close it.

[Les Newell]

Give this post a try. Your example uses a plain drilling cycle but this post uses a peck drilling cycle. Otherwise it should be pretty close.
I couldn't see anything wrong with the pecking in your job. Changing the peck depth doesn't cause a crash here. I suspect it could be a graphics issue. Try with one hole instead of a lrge array of holes. Do you stil have the same problem?

[BrentHenry1974]

Thing is I don't want to peck drill but that is the only way that SC doesn't crash. If you take the .job file I attached and take the peck out, that's when it crashes on me.

[BrentHenry1974]

Also when I run the .nc file from your script in a simulator, it gives an error:
Cycle error: Cycle parameter R is missing! (N0110 G98 G83 Z-1.45 Q1.45 F5.7 K0.0

[LesNewell]

Did you try with just one hole?
I have attached a version of the post that should fix the cycle error.

[BrentHenry1974]

Yes it does work with less holes. The other part of this job has 458 holes and it takes about 10 minutes but it finally lets me post. I have a pretty strong computer as you can see from the attached pic. Is there anything i can do about this cause 90% of my drilling jobs will be that many holes?


Thanks the post doesn't give any errors now.

[LesNewell]

What value are you setting the peck depth to? To drill without pecking set the peck depth to equal or greather than the drill depth. If you set the peck depth to 0 it will take a very long time to generate the tool paths and maybe cause it to crash as you are generating tens of thousands of pecks per hole as it tries to drill the hole with tiny pecks.

[BrentHenry1974]

Oh ok. My misunderstanding. I thought that the peck would be 0 if i didn't want to peck but it needs to be the same so it really makes one peck at my total depth. Sorry for that.

One last thing. Maybe I am misunderstanding this again but in the edit material options is "rapid clearance" the height that the tool goes up too to move to the next hole and "plunge safety clearance" the height it stops at before starting to drill the next hole. If I am assuming this correct then when I change the "plunge safety clearance" number it should change the R value in the last post processor error i was getting.
Right now i have to change the "rapid clearance" number for it to change in the last post processor that was corrected.

[LesNewell]

I could do that. Do you want me to change the post?

[BrentHenry1974]

Yes please

[Les Newell]

This should do it.

[BrentHenry1974]

Works great!!! One last thing. would it be possible to add a GOTO line. Sometimes we need to go back to a certain hole. That would help a lot. Thanks for all your help Les!!!

[LesNewell]

Can you explain what you mean. This seems to be a Fanuc specific thing.