AJAX retrofit-update

Your kidding right? Ever hear of a G83?

Russ Russ Wizinsky

Almost all the programming I've done is on lathes where hole patterns or arrays are not used. Most the programming I've done on mills is contours. The reason I bought this mill in fact. To do contours faster than sine vise and rotary table work. G83 is fine for the deep hole drilling but you are still left with the array and skipped holes in the array that were programmed much faster than just writing G code which is the way I've done it since 1976. This conversational programming is new to me but widespread and in use for years. For someone fairly new to this hobby who is building their own machine from a Boss or any other machine with a bad control the AJAX system would be a good way to go and less expensive than many other options. The posts I've made about this retrofit are geared toward these people. I want to see others get involved in this hobby 'cause it's lots of fun and old cnc machines with obsolete or broken controls can be had for cheap and then someone can have cnc for cheap. Obviously not aimed at a professional like you. BTW, the only connections I have with AJAX are as a satisfied customer. Cheers, Eric

snipped-for-privacy@aol.com (Russ Wizinsky - ProfessorWiz) wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@mb-m19.aol.com:

and a step-over loop subroutine?

Eric, Usually you can con a G code card out of Fadal or somebody that sells them. I"ve been programming in G and M code for 10 years, with and without the aid of Cad/cam systems. Once learned it's not that hard. The TurboCNC web site has an excellent reference for G&M codes too! I've heard of people using feeds to peck a hole but thought they were just shop gossip. There is a fantastic world of different codes with all kinds of different pecks, tapping cycles, boring cycles.

Russ Russ Wizinsky

I know. Old habits die hard. This new control is much more powerful than the other old fanucs in my shop. ERS

I often hand code a peck drill cycle as a macro. When real precision isn't called for but I still don't want to give the drill a chance to walk, this allows a slow start, going to full feed as soon as the drill is fully engaged. In some materials I will go 2x drill dia deep or more in the first peck or two, then reduce peck depth to prevent chips from clogging the flutes.

Years ago running a CNC with a Bosch control, I was doing a job drilling thousands of .046 holes through 1/2" steel. I noticed the peck cycle would pause ever so slightly before every axis reversal. Out of curiosity, I hand coded a drill cycle using G00 and G01. No pauses, and it knocked almost two minutes off the run time of each part! Savings totaled almost an hour for a production run.

Not beneficial for short run stuff, but things like this add up, and tweaking programs for minute gains has resulted in some jobs running at a very profitable rate.

Jon

I've also noticed our Mazaks with the 800 foot per min rapids won't go all the way down in the hole if using a g81 in a high feed mode about 20 ipm. They will be shy about .010" or so. but were usually prototype so it's just easier to give it an extra .010". As long as you know the problem they usually aren't hard to overcome. But if we transfer the program to another machine than we have to watch for that extra .010".

Russ Wizinsky