Professional CNC machine -- meaning of CYCLE START and CYCLE STOP

Now that I figured out how to connect panel buttons to EMC and to specify what to do when they are pressed, etc. I have coolant working the way I want.

So now is the time to move on to more panel controls.

I have two buttons on my mill called (in the schematic) CYCLE START and CYCLE STOP. I want to know what they mean exactly. I can make them mean anything I want, but I want to do the right thing. This is a little bit of a reality check.

I think that CYCLE START is like a play button, and CYCLE STOP is like a pause button.

If I press CYCLE STOP, I want motion, spindle and coolant to stop. Then I could vacuum chips, measure something, etc. If I press CYCLE START, I want spindle to restart, coolant to start flowing, and motion to resume. I am a little fuzzy on this, like how can EMC remember that coolant was running before, for example. I guess that pressing cycle stop twice could mean end of program and return to manual mode.

Any comments?

i
Reply to
Ignoramus18915
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Exactly. Except you don't stop the spindle and coolant. Its used A LOT when debugging a CNC program. You want these buttons located so you don't have to look to find them. cyclestart can also restart a Gcode program after an optional stop gcode. Most often used for moving clamps cleaning something, etc.

I also like a single step mode switch so cycle start runs one line of Gcode.

You normally see spindle start CW, start CCW, and stop buttons.

Coolant is often on a three position switch with off, on, auto. Or start and stop pushbuttons.

Karl

Reply to
Karl Townsend

Yup, you got it.

Rewinding the program is 'RESET' on our Haas, the fanucs, you go to edit and then press reset.

While you are implementing things. Single Block, optional stop, and rapid over ride buttons would be nice. "Dry run" (Z axis not moving while X and Y goes though the motions) is nice also. I suspect you can mouse click this stuff but buttons for the things you might actually use are just better.

Wes

Reply to
Wes

I may be able to do something like, pressing CYCLE STOP while the program is running is pause, byt pressing CYCLE STOP while paused is RESET.

I have one button called LIMIT OVERRIDE. I do not really need it, as I can do it with GUI and it does not seem likely that I will be tripping limits a lot. So I could replace it with some other button altogether.

What I was thinking is to add a button sized potentiometer called "speed override", where I can make everything run faster or slower.

i
Reply to
Ignoramus28671

Karl, I have one button that I do not want (limit override), I may instead make it do one step of G code if EMC supports it.

i
Reply to
Ignoramus28671

This is EXTREMELY handy. No way do you get feeds just right on one of parts. I've got a spindle speed pot on all my machines also. If you've got manual machine experience you can dial in proper feeds and speeds in just a few seconds. In my case, I've never used a speed feed calculator.

Karl

Reply to
Karl Townsend

Most commercial CNC lathes and mills have this feature. From 100%-150%.

I think of it as "military power "

The pot is very important when you are trying to get as much out of the machine per hour as possible.

Gunner

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Reply to
Gunner Asch

OK thanks. I do not know if Jon's PPMC can take in analog signal, I am unaware of whether it is true or not. But if it could, it would be nice. I will check with him.

i
Reply to
Ignoramus28671

Feed rate override and spindle rpm override controls on industrial CNC controls are generally not potentiometers, they are normally rotary switches and operate in 10% steps both above and below the program feed rate or RPM, i.e. 30%-...-90%-100%-110%-...-180%, which would work well using a standard 4 bit 16 position rotary selector switch.

Reply to
Pete C.

Have it put out more than nominal speed voltage and run the output voltage through a pot on the way to the VFD's input. That way you can go from your selected amount above the nominal speed down to zero speed (or perhaps add a fixed resistor on the bottom leg of the pot so you don't quite get down to halted).

Of course -- if the system is monitoring the speed via the spindle encoder, it will figure that something is wrong -- so prepare for disabling the speed monitoring when using the pot.

Enjoy, DoN.

Reply to
DoN. Nichols

It is not really for the VFD, it is for the rate of feed.

i

Reply to
Ignoramus28671

Oh -- you're right.

Hmm ... a spare encoder on a knob to be read by a spare axis? Perhaps run a display somewhere near (or prominently in the system's monitor) showing how much the speed is boosted or reduced.

The BOSS-3 Bridgeport had a feed speed pot which could only be used to reduce the speed -- so if you were starting to build up aluminum on your mill, you could slow the feed while letting the job finish.

It was a nice Allen-Bradley pot in a nice Allen-Bradley mount (same hole as the switches and coolant proof). So yours did not have that? (or all of your switches and controls went away when you sold the controller I guess.)

Enjoy, DoN.

Reply to
DoN. Nichols

Yes and the software definitely has a feed rate override function and provisions for controlling that function from external "hard" controls, not just soft keys on a screen. Of course a touch screen wouldn't exactly be a bad thing either.

Reply to
Pete C.

On EMC, these would be essentially "Run" and "Pause".

On a commercial control, cycle stop will NOT stop the spindle.

EMC doesn't handle this as gracefully as some other controls. And, Run is different than "reSume" on most of the EMC2 GUIs. You could certainly fix this your HAL interface to these buttons. I think the indication is if the interpreter is not idle, then it is in the middle of a program, and you would want a resume instead of a run. There is a program abort function (Esc key) that terminates a program and stops spindle and coolant. You can not resume from an abort. You have to manually restore the spindle, spindle speed and coolant conditions and then do a "run from line" to get back to where you were.

Jon

Reply to
Jon Elson

EMC does have a single-block option.

Jon

Reply to
Jon Elson

Awesome. This button is near pause and resume, so single step would make sense.

i
Reply to
Ignoramus28671

I agree now that pause should pause the movement, but not the spindle and not the coolant. I would let them keep running during a pause.

With that having been said, I think that it should be a simple job for HALUI to have a start/resume button and a pause button.

i
Reply to
Ignoramus18921

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