How Did You Start Out Programming Your NC/CNC Machine???

[Bob La Londe]

I started out as a hobbyist with a Taig. When I registered Mach 3 to run it I also got a license for the Wizards and Lazycam. Honestly I think the Wizards and Lazycam did me me more harm than good. There are one group of wizards that are pretty good, and they open as a group. The rest of them have no consistency in programming style setup, some are buggy, and one is downright bad turning circles into lemons. No that is not a metaphor. Circles generated by that particular one come out lemon shaped and when I ask for help they told me it was a problem with my machine.

LazyCAM never should have been released on unsuspecting victims... err I mean beginners.

I honestly think that Lazy Cam and some of the Wizards that are less than wonderful did as much damage to Mach 3's reputation as any limitations with Mach 3 itself.

That being said I did successfully complete a few projects using that utter garbage, but my first comprehensive injection mold project was hand-coded in a text editor using macros in Lotus 123 (It might have been Excel) to generate the boring iterative code. Some of it used some rather interesting and confusing Arc functions and swapped axis work planes. It didn't take me long to realize that was not the way to get jobs like that done. Often I would look up a code, generate two or three lines of sample code, and then I would study the toolpaths on the Mach 3 display screen to try and understand what they actually did. I understand g code well enough today that often when I have needed to do a simple part I have just typed in code one line at a time at the MDI interface on the machine. Functionally CNC manual machining.

I tried a couple different CAM programs. Some paid, some free, some in demo. It didn't take me long to realize that most of them weren't very well developed and one of those that came the most highly recommended for hobby level 3D machining I thought was a total turd after I paid for it to see what it would "really" do. Interestingly it still seems to have a fair reputation.

Then I discovered CamBam... And after having been burned before initially I hated it. The free version that was available at the time was pretty horrid. I have no idea why Andy left that out there. The paid version which I demoed over the course of several months due to its liberal executions-based demo period and the ability to install it on a couple different computers still didn't impress me. I am afraid I was not very nice about it on their support forums either. Of course I had not had a good experience with any CAM up until that point. I was still hand coding and using a spreadsheet to generate my real projects.

Surprisingly instead of getting slammed back as fan boys are wont to do on 99.99999999% of forums several forum members stepped up and help me get past a couple of the little learning and conceptual glitches that I had. In fact it has historically been the least confrontation and the most helpful forum of any I have ever been on. To this day I feel obligated to pop in once in awhile and help the next generation of newbies get past their initial learning curves if somebody else hasn't beaten me to it.

I've used a few other CAM program since. A couple of them in some ways are far superior. Still, I fall back on CamBam for a lot of my code generation in spite of all of its bugs and necessary workarounds because it generally works for me. I think the cam with Fulsion360 for example generates much nicer code and has greater capabilities. I never did care for the cad in Fusion though. In spite of liking 2D for a lot of work that other people use 3D for, for my 3D work I prefer a solid modeler over a parametric modeler.

Anyway, this wasn't intended to be a commercial for any software. It was just to share how I started generating code at the beginning and get an idea of how you started.

[kf2qd]

I wound up writing my own macros in VBA for AutoCad. SOme simple stuff originally to just extract some data from the autocad file so I didn't have to do the calulations. Then I did some more work so I could use VBA to generate code in a shop that wanted me to manually program parts (an italian company here in the US doing parts for Caterpillar...) So I worked on the macros so I could generate code without the mistakes that show up when typing everything by hand, I then di some more work on those macros to generate code for a 2 axis waterjet using a Burny 10 control. I then played with them some more when I got my Sieg KX3 CNC and have to draw my toolpath, in 3D and generate code that I can then run on the machine. Along with that I wrote a couple other macros to create the code for drilling holes, Center Drill, or Drill or Ream. The macros come in real handy when we have to do something special on the waterjet, Lay out the cuts for a fixture and then the actual part, all using the same zero reference on the waterjet.

[lbender]

Then I discovered CamBam...

This is my first CNC job. Hand coded in a text editor and yes, all the points in the engraving was truly a joy.
After that my boss found a copy of Cambam that I still use.

P.S. This is a take on the old joke about accountants who expect to ship a 1000 pounds of product from 1000 pounds of prime.

[Bob La Londe]

This is my first CNC job. Hand coded in a text editor and yes, all the points in the engraving was truly a joy.
After that my boss found a copy of Cambam that I still use.

P.S. This is a take on the old joke about accountants who expect to ship a 1000 pounds of product from 1000 pounds of prime.

That's a neat little project.

1.0 64bit is decent, but it still has its bugs and requires a few workarounds. I use it nearly every day.

[npalen]

First programming was hand written with G, F and M codes and then punched into 1" width tape with a Friden Flexwriter in the late sixties. I don't recall there being such a thing as linear and circular interpolation. I do recall purchasing a Devlieg 3K-72 Jigmil in the early seventies and one job was cutting tapered gib surfaces inside feed table saddles. Each step had to be programmed with the X and Y coordinates in, like, 0.001" increments so had to type in each of the steps on the Friden if I remember correctly. That made for a very long tape.

[Bob La Londe]

First programming was hand written with G, F and M codes and then punched into 1" width tape with a Friden Flexwriter in the late sixties. I don't recall there being such a thing as linear and circular interpolation. I do recall purchasing a Devlieg 3K-72 Jigmil in the early seventies and one job was cutting tapered gib surfaces inside feed table saddles. Each step had to be programmed with the X and Y coordinates in, like, 0.001" increments so had to type in each of the steps on the Friden if I remember correctly. That made for a very long tape.

There are still some controls that will not accept circular interpolation. Some CAM programs will allow you to modify a post processor to output linear code only and define the increment. Run into the same thing with some types of drill operations.

[npalen]

I recall visiting a Sunstrand plant in Denver back in the late sixties with at least one large machine tool in the plant controlled by the mainframe computer in the office. It was not producing parts when we were there.

[skunkworks]

late 80's - we purchased Cimcom. (editor plus serial console to run nc/cnc/punch tape reader/puncher)

All of the gcode was written by hand. Did create some gcode utilities in GWbasic.. Including a simple simulator to test the gcode.

Then we purchased design cad. This had a scripting language that was pretty much basic. I created a script that allowed you to click around a drawing and create gcode. Used that for a long time until autocad and ace converter..

Still use ace converter and also a lot of by-hand gcode.

sam

[RB211]

Fusion360 and Centroid post processor. KISS.

[Bob La Londe]

Fusion360 and Centroid post processor. KISS.

Well there were drug dealers getting kids hooked... even back then. Fusion360 didn't exist though.

[Dan Dubeau]

Mastercam V9 was my first introduction to CAM in the real world. Started off programing the 2d engraving on fixture bases for the fadal and taurus router, then eventually moved up to 5axis programming for our big DMG.

Used a few other software packages in between, but now I use Edgecam for 3/4axis programming of haas machines, and finger cam for 2axis lathe. I still haven't given fusion cam a look yet. Keep meaning to, just never any time to play around with it.

[Illinoyance]

Started programming a Moog Hydrapoint in the 80s. Learned from the card that listed the codes. Later we got a used machine with a 4th axis. I had no reference material on how the 4th axis was programmed. Using the punched tape that came with the machine, I printed out a bunch of the code. I looked for unfamiliar code, figuring it related to the 4th axis. Using that code and a lot of trial and error, I managed to work out how the 4th axis was programmed.

Later, I attended a course on G and M code programming for lathes offered by General Numeric that covered Fanuc controls.

[Hopsteiner]

Bob, read your post about your starting in CNC. I have a Sherline CNC mill with Linux. I have not been able to do anything with it. I’m a retired die maker so I have time on my hands. I took a class in Solidworks and a course in Master cam but…. Still don’t know where to begin.

[Bob La Londe]

Bob, read your post about your starting in CNC. I have a Sherline CNC mill with Linux. I have not been able to do anything with it. I’m a retired die maker so I have time on my hands. I took a class in Solidworks and a course in Master cam but…. Still don’t know where to begin.

Does the machine appear to operate correctly?

[Hopsteiner]

Yes it does. I’ve read the instructions numerous times.