Centroid Community CNC Support Forum

Hello, I was reading thru Tutorial #2 in the Mill Operators Manual (Draft July 27, 2023) and have a question about using Depth Repeat with Cutter Comp. I think there may be some typo's. At the bottom of page 192 it says "The outer contour begins with the Plunge operation in N0011 and ends with the Linear Mill in operation N0017. However, the program listing at the top of the page shows the Plunge in N0010, and N0017 is an Arc CW, not Linear move. Also, N0019 shows "Comp Left". Should that not be "Comp Off".

I'm trying to determine if the "Comp Left" and "Comp Off" need to be inside the Start and End Blocks of the Depth Repeat?

post your .icn program

You are correct that the tutorial has a typo.

It should either say that the Depth Repeat should start with the plunge in operation N0010, or it should say that the Depth Repeat should start with the Comp Left in operation N0011.

You would probably get much the same result either way.

The lead-in and lead-out moves in the tutorial are also somewhat suspect. It is usually good practice to lead in and lead out on a tangent; but the tutorial has you make a 0.5" radius arc, from X5 Y0.5 to X4.625 Y0 (a distance of -0.375" on X, and -0.500" on Y). This will leave a small amount of uncut material behind, as the comped path turns away from the part a little early.

i tend to do the lead in moves on material that isn't part of the actual part whenever possible.
post your intercon program so we can see what you are doing and edit it and send back to you.

i am updating the operator manual with our new tech support guy Domenic.
We improved the "c rod" tutorial using better cutter comp practices. (get the tool compensated before it reaches any material of the actual part).
and proper depth repeat begin and end points

please see sample .icn and .cnc files attached.

Thanks for the help, I didn't mean to create work for you. I don't really have an icn file yet. I'm just now getting my shop made cnc mill running and was preparing to make my first part, which is a part for a power draw bar I'm adding. As I was programming it in Intercon, I was struggling with the moves it was making when cutter comp turned off, so I read the tutorial when I noticed the typo. I actually made the part without using cutter comp and it turned out great, but I can certainly see the value in using cutter comp to simplify the math. I'll try it again using cutter comp and post my results. Thanks again.

Jim

JRD56 wrote: ↑Wed Sep 27, 2023 6:48 am Thanks for the help, I didn't mean to create work for you. I don't really have an icn file yet. I'm just now getting my shop made cnc mill running and was preparing to make my first part, which is a part for a power draw bar I'm adding. As I was programming it in Intercon, I was struggling with the moves it was making when cutter comp turned off, so I read the tutorial when I noticed the typo. I actually made the part without using cutter comp and it turned out great, but I can certainly see the value in using cutter comp to simplify the math. I'll try it again using cutter comp and post my results. Thanks again.

Jim

no worries, thanks for pointing the confusion/issues in the tutorial we are always trying to make things better.

We have updated the tutorial to include better cutter comp and lead-in/lead-out strategies as well as proper depth repeat programming. The manual has also been updated to reflect these changes (not 100% updated quite yet, N0002-0004 are slightly different, but it's still close enough to follow along); the updated manual (09-30-23) can be found here. The sample file for the tutorial is up-to-date, and can be found below.

Next up is to work on converting it from inches to mm for all our metric folk!