Morning Gents, Now that I finally have the machine completed, and up and running, it's time to actually learn how to use the damn thing.
To set the scene: It's a two axis machine, X and Z axes. Fairly simple operation. The machine will be cutting tapered bamboo strips, ranging in length from about 32" to 54", in one pass, using two saws set in a "V" on the Z axis with the "point" of the "V" towards the bottom.. The taper is not a linear taper, and in some places it tapers more than others and in other places less. The tapering is based on one inch centers - ie X0 Y.125 X1 Y.123 X2 Y.120 and so on, and may not vary even that much between the X points. Bamboo fly fishing rods typically are made in two sections, the tip and the butt. The sections are made of of six strips each, and normally two tips are made for each rod. So, for the tip, you'll have 12 identically tapered strips, and for the butt, you'll have 6 identically tapered strips. The tip strips will all be milled to an identical thickness before being put on the machine, as will the butt strips (though the butt and tip strips will not necessarily be the same thickness). The strips, whether butt or tip, will be mounted on the vacuum hold-down with the end where the cut begins in exactly the same place every time (X axis touch off point). The Z axis touch off will be the only thing that differs, and that will only differ if it does between the butt and tip strips. There will be a separate G code file for the butt strips and the tip strips, mostly hand coded. Now we start getting to the crux of my questions and confusion. In the User Manual, Chapter 10, "G Code Best Practices", there's a paragraph titled "Put important modal settings at the top of the file", and included is this string - G17 G20 G40 G49 G54 G80 G90 G94. Some of those are pretty straight forward, and some have me not sure why they would be included, or which of the codes i should actually select. G17 - Plane select - since this is a two axis machine, and uses the X and Z axes, should I include this code, and i do include it, would it be G18 - the XZ plane? G20 - inch units, that's what I'll be working with G40 - Cancel Cutter Comp - used even if cutter comp is not used, won't hurt anything to call it G49 - Cancel tool length offset - same principle as G40 G54 - this one I'm not sure about why it would be included. When you home the machine, you're on the machine coords X0 Y0, right? Does this inclusion just automagically zeroize the G54 coords and match them to the machine coords? G80 - Cancel motion modes - similar to G40 and G49 G90 - Distance mode - Absolute distance - this one, though seemingly straight forward gives me questions on some of the other codes - the G54 - G59 codes - though they are consider coordinate system codes, aren't they also technically an incremental distance code based on where you call the axis zero? G94 - units per minute feet code - in my case, since I selected G20, that would be inches per minute. Now, in some other G Code files, I've also seen feeds and speeds in that initial line. Is that good practice too, or should I just call it out when needed? Thanks, Mark ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ _______________________________________________ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
