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Author Topic: Button to pick three different toolpaths each time???  (Read 5971 times)

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Button to pick three different toolpaths each time???
« on: August 31, 2008, 10:23:06 PM »
I had this posted somewhere else, but I will see if you can help me here.

I own an engraving business where we make signs for the country/gift shop industry.  We run multiple phrases on 1x4 boards.  We use Mach3 to run our EZ-Router, and I generate my toolpaths from VCarve.  So if I want to engrave the phrase, "Welcome to the Cabin" on a 3 ft 1x4, I choose that toolpath, put the board in, hit start, and it engraves it in about 3 minutes.  Then I have to go change the board and pick the next phrase.  That leaves me with having to change the board every 3-5 minutes, which gets old.  Since we run a very large volume of these signs, and we have a LOT of different phrases, I would like to have some sort of an add-on for my Mach3 controller.  What I would like to be able to do is load the machine with 3 1x4s (we only use 1x4s), pick the three toolpaths (phrases) I want on each board, hit start, and walk away and do other shop stuff for 15 minutes. 

So say a customer wants a 3 ft "Welcome to the Cabin", a 3 ft "Welcome to the Lake" and a 3 ft "Life's Better at the Beach".  So I want to be able to load the three boards on the table, pick the three different toolpaths out, hit start, and the machine will engrave each of the phrases on each of the boards.  Does anyone know of a program add on I can get for that?  Can anyone program something like that for me?

Bill

**Here was the reply**


Just copy each of your programmes in turn into a blank notepad file, take out the M30 in between these programmes and add a G52 Y* (or X* if stacking lengthways)
What that will do is move your Y axis (or X) by the amount you have entered (where I have put the *)
Its easier to do than explain, do a bit of messing around with the G52 and you will soon see how it works.
Hood



**Here's my reply***



Sounds great, and I knew this sort of thing was possible, but it may take a minute or two to do each time, and since each order for each customer will be different, I will have to do this [/i]every fifteen minutes just to save a few minutes of changing the board.  I guess what I had in mind was a button I would click and it would say, "load first toolpath" "load second toolpath" "load third toolpath" and Mach would do it for me.  Does a program add on exist like this?  I would use this sort of thing ALL THE TIME.  As far as how many toolpaths/phrases I have, I run approximately 140 different toolpaths for that tool (60 degree V Bit) alone.  So as you can see, the number of possibilities I have is astronomical.

Thanks for the reply!

**************

Can anyone help?

Bill
www.engraversoflight.com

Offline poppabear

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Re: Button to pick three different toolpaths each time???
« Reply #1 on: September 01, 2008, 08:41:13 AM »
Bill,

    Yes it can be done, in a Wizard, but it will take some Code Prep work on your part.

I can make it where you can add as many phrazes that your machine can handle, and it will automatically offset to the next board.

One Caveiot though, wood is not very accurate, so there will be some kind of limit in where after so many boards pushed together, the offsetting would
be correct for the Machine, but the location of your Phraze line would drift up or down. If you want I could put optional hiegth
Adjustment buttons.

Contact me off list at:  poppabear@hughes.net
we can discuss rates depending on what you want.

scott

fun times

vmax549

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Re: Button to pick three different toolpaths each time???
« Reply #2 on: December 17, 2008, 08:57:19 PM »
YOu could build each phrase as a SUB and store them in the Sub directory. Each phase will end with a routine to index to the next starting position on the fixture that holds the boards.

 Then  call up the phrases you need to run by use of  parameters and start the program

From MDI  #1=10001 ( program name as a number) #2=10024  #3=10126 , ETC

Then run a program created to run each parameter as a sub 1 time. It will then run each phrase(board) index itself to the next position and run the next and next. You could run as many boards as you have space on your fixture for. 3,6,9,20????

Just a thought, (;-) TP




I do this with a simple engraving macro that you select the letters and then mach will go do the engraving based on the parameters I select.

Offline Bill_O

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Re: Button to pick three different toolpaths each time???
« Reply #3 on: March 26, 2009, 08:04:10 AM »
Bill,

You could probably modify this code I did to do 3 or more files.
http://www.machsupport.com/forum/index.php/topic,10910.0.html

Bill