Has anyone noticed that using the rectangular option in the conversational milling start in the lower right corner of a part? If. you switch to spiral it will start at your work offset. I find this very strange. I couldn’t find anything online about this.
I am using PP2.8.3. I tried the simulator for 2.14.2 and the results are the same. I am assuming that is just the way it is. Just seems weird to me that the exact same settings just switching options changes the starting locations.
Is there something I am doing wrong here? Or is this just the way it is?
Just curious why you prefer the retangular vs spiral.. I use the spiral be cause it produces less burr by driving it into the work piece. Is it faster?
It’s what I normally use if I programmed it in Fusion. I also like the finish with straight lines instead of the spiral. As long as it works I would be fine with it but since it started at a different spot than the G54 location I thought I was doing something wrong and it was driving me nuts. I spent a more time than I care to admit changing parameters and no matter what I did it always starts in the opposite corner from the G54 location.
Now I just want to know why it’s like that since I spent so much time on it. It seems that either it’s a bug or just intended that way. It doesn’t seem right to me.
I wanted to get better at using the conversational programming for simple operations. This doesn’t seem right. I searched YouTube and the forums and I couldn’t find any information on this hence my post.
I also noticed if you choose rectangular and it is a single pass it will start at the G54 location. It seems it’s only when it has to do more than one pass that it loves the starting location to the bottom right of the part.
I had a odd toolpath milling a boss with conversational. I reported it but haven’t heard if they have a solution.
It would start clearing corners and then it would plow right through solid stock in 3 corners and leave most of the 4th. I was milling wood at the time, if it had been steel the em would likely have broke. It also plunged into stock instead of empty space.
I was able to get it to work, not correctly. To me this seems like a bug in the programming. I was able to face mill my parts, just lost a bunch of time trying to figure out why it was starting in the wrong spot. Sent in a ticket to Tormach. Hopefully they respond. I don’t think this is right.
No, the diagram for facing is misleading, conversational will pick the corner it feels is best for entry, there is no way to force it to enter from one specific location.
Have you tried tricking it by puting the part close enough to the Y- that it decides to go in from the Y+? Or maybe add a soft limit that does something similar for that part of the program. I’m not a g-code expert but I like tricking it.
I tried everything I could and it won’t do it. Support said it is the way it is. The interface is confusing in their words. It decides to start where it wants to. I think it’s rather confusing. It should start at G54 but it doesn’t. Maybe in the next version it will but for now it doesn’t. So anyone who may read this in the future you are not going nuts that is just the way it works.
Brian, I am curious why you want it to start at G54?
PP has been developed over the last decade with functions and options added at various times. I don’t see this as a bug, it is just the way that developer decided to implement this function. Maybe I don’t fully understand what you are after, though.
If you set g54 at the bottom right corner and setup the conversational from there does it still start at the same place or does it start at the upper left corner (where you want it to start)?
No. It does the same thing and calculates the positions in the opposite corner outside the bounds of the machine. Seems like that interface needs some work in my opinion. When you have CAM created in Fusion or whatever you use you start at G54. When conversational doesn’t makes no sense to me. I am just a hobby user so what do I know. Just seems like there is a lack of continuity there in the interface.
Probably an easier programming job to start at opposite corner and work back, climb cutting or conv, as requested. It puts any “can’t get there” errors up front rather than halfway through an op.
Might be the answer is to document it does that and put improving in the future to-do list. I don’t think conversational is intended to be a full CAM replacement, but people are using it in surprisingly complex ways.
“When you have CAM created in Fusion or whatever you use you start at G54.”
This is not a universal practice; starting at the center of a part for OP1’s is very common, or if you are using a zero point system your work coordinate is likely (at least initially) not even positioned on your workpiece at all.
That’s fine. The interface is still not intuitive and rather confusing. It seems rather odd that the exact same parameters start at two completely different locations. Looking at the interface it looks like the start is always the top left of the part. When you run the file and the machine moves to the lower right of the part what would you think?
If it was well documented I wouldn’t care but it isn’t so I ended up wasting a bunch of time. Maybe in the future make a simple video on it explaining how it works. The only video from Tormach I could find shows the circular path not the rectangular.
I went into the simulator and rectangular facing starts at the bottom right and spiral starts at top left. I don’t have a problem with either way. With spiral it doesn’t actually start at g54 but slightly left and down from zero. It takes a cut at less than the stepover set for the first pass around.
With boss milling I never know where it will start.
