@@Hirudin Oh for sure. If I use it you will be the first to know. However, giving me a macro and complex code would be like feeding strawberries to pigs ha ha ha. Jokes aside, fantastic work mate. Cheers :-)
That's cool, your program is more full-featured than the one I use. My branching program is similar by assigning a temporary number then evaluating it. I never streamlined it down to a single looping routine though, instead mine is 10 calls for the fourth digit, 10 calls for the third digit, 10 calls for the second digit, etc. But yours is scalable up or down which is pretty cool, mine not so much (lol)
Yeah, those WHILEs work really well for this macro! If I'm reading my manual right, it looks like variables can be up to ~99 digits long. My pipedream is to have it parse-out alt codes and engrave letters and symbols too. Problem is, I can only think of a few ways that could be used... I'm not sure I'm convinced it would actually be "useful" in practice.
@@Hirudin that would be nifty, but I agree about the niche-ness. Your controller has a little more options for that stuff. For instance haas only goes up to 6 digits so I'm capped out pretty quick (lol). but hey if it keeps you up at night though, there's only one way to sate the hunger!
@@ydna Heheh... I must resist trying to make that work! My sleep schedule is FUBAR already. 6 seems low, but 99 seems huge! Is it possible your machine will store/use a larger number, even if it can't display it? My manual clearly wasn't originally written in English, so I'm very unsure about the longest possible value, but the manual does do a good job explaining that the UI will show ~"**********" if it can't displsy the whole number, but the value will be stored correctly.
@@Hirudin yeah it goes "invalid" if you exceed 6 leading or trailing digits. I suppose technically I could break up a 12 digit number into that limit, then use a counter to fix the value halfway through the engraving. I've had to do that when counting past the number 256 using an 8-bit microcontroller, but it got hairy. I'll cross that bridge when it comes to it heh
I feel like I have a million questions, but one of the most significant one right off the bat - is it completely impractical to include this type of sequential engraving during a normal machining operation or should this be done as its own separate operation? Seems like this adds many layers of complexity that could cause things to go haywire...
@@Hirudin I haven't and this is only from a quick glance, but I'm a project engineer for one of the largest cad cam companies and my approach would be a G68 coordinate rotation, if your macro is toolpaths for each number then all you need to do is rotate the coordinate system before each number and switch it off after each number, you can also offset the coordinate rotation. I would change the position of each number to work from the centre instead of from the bottom left hand corner because then you won't need to offset the coordinate rotation but if you are planning to keep it on the bottom left hand you will have to calculate the offset amount with some trig.
@@Limosical I think when I was making it I got the impression that one of the commands wouldn't work in conjunction with rotation. Yeah, the origin in the center of the number might be better, particularly if you'd like them to be rotated.
But now that you point it out, I realize that adding that video clip a second time at the end would have improved the video. Or I could have said something like "rewind back to the beginning of this video to see how it turned out".
Well done, that’s great work. Your way more clever than me. Thanks for sharing 🍻
Thank you! If you use it I'd love to hear about how it went!
@@Hirudin Oh for sure. If I use it you will be the first to know. However, giving me a macro and complex code would be like feeding strawberries to pigs ha ha ha. Jokes aside, fantastic work mate. Cheers :-)
That's cool, your program is more full-featured than the one I use. My branching program is similar by assigning a temporary number then evaluating it. I never streamlined it down to a single looping routine though, instead mine is 10 calls for the fourth digit, 10 calls for the third digit, 10 calls for the second digit, etc. But yours is scalable up or down which is pretty cool, mine not so much (lol)
Yeah, those WHILEs work really well for this macro! If I'm reading my manual right, it looks like variables can be up to ~99 digits long. My pipedream is to have it parse-out alt codes and engrave letters and symbols too. Problem is, I can only think of a few ways that could be used... I'm not sure I'm convinced it would actually be "useful" in practice.
@@Hirudin that would be nifty, but I agree about the niche-ness. Your controller has a little more options for that stuff. For instance haas only goes up to 6 digits so I'm capped out pretty quick (lol). but hey if it keeps you up at night though, there's only one way to sate the hunger!
@@ydna Heheh... I must resist trying to make that work! My sleep schedule is FUBAR already.
6 seems low, but 99 seems huge! Is it possible your machine will store/use a larger number, even if it can't display it? My manual clearly wasn't originally written in English, so I'm very unsure about the longest possible value, but the manual does do a good job explaining that the UI will show ~"**********" if it can't displsy the whole number, but the value will be stored correctly.
@@Hirudin yeah it goes "invalid" if you exceed 6 leading or trailing digits. I suppose technically I could break up a 12 digit number into that limit, then use a counter to fix the value halfway through the engraving. I've had to do that when counting past the number 256 using an 8-bit microcontroller, but it got hairy. I'll cross that bridge when it comes to it heh
I feel like I have a million questions, but one of the most significant one right off the bat - is it completely impractical to include this type of sequential engraving during a normal machining operation or should this be done as its own separate operation? Seems like this adds many layers of complexity that could cause things to go haywire...
To add a rotation is quite easy, pass a value into the macro that is used to control the rotation in a G68 command.
Are you saying you've tried it?
... with *this* macro?
@@Hirudin I haven't and this is only from a quick glance, but I'm a project engineer for one of the largest cad cam companies and my approach would be a G68 coordinate rotation, if your macro is toolpaths for each number then all you need to do is rotate the coordinate system before each number and switch it off after each number, you can also offset the coordinate rotation. I would change the position of each number to work from the centre instead of from the bottom left hand corner because then you won't need to offset the coordinate rotation but if you are planning to keep it on the bottom left hand you will have to calculate the offset amount with some trig.
@@Limosical I think when I was making it I got the impression that one of the commands wouldn't work in conjunction with rotation.
Yeah, the origin in the center of the number might be better, particularly if you'd like them to be rotated.
@@Hirudin I will have a play and test it on a digital twin, may take a while.
Make more videos about macroprogramming
Hey Hirudin, was this done on a Brother CNC?
Indeed it was. :)
37 minutes long and no close-up of the final result???
Did you happen to catch the first 38 seconds?
But now that you point it out, I realize that adding that video clip a second time at the end would have improved the video. Or I could have said something like "rewind back to the beginning of this video to see how it turned out".