Using HSMXpress for a Punch Press

[Anonymous]

I have a friend who runs a small custom sheet metal shop that includes a couple of water jet tables and a couple of punch presses.  He is good to go on the water jet tables because all he has to do is export the customers Solidworks file as a dwg file to the water jet.

The punch presses are a completely different story.  I was shocked to learn that he is doing manual takeoffs of the X and Y locations off of drawings and then creating a text file G-code for his punch presses.  I was even more shocked that he is doing this in spite of having a full seat of Solidworks.  All the punch presses seem to need is a text file of the X and Y locations of where to punch.  He had tried and failed to find a way to "export" the X/Y coordinates from Solidworks, which is obviously not an "export" but a CAM operation.

I am assuming that he could use HSMXpress as a way (probably not the best way, but surely better than manual takeoffs) to generate g-code for his punch presses.

I am hoping to help my friend come out of the stone ages for his small shop.  While I just installed HSMXpress for the first time and so don't have any experience with it, I do have some experience with both Solidworks and SurfCAM.

Questions:

1.  Is anyone else using HSMXpress to generate G-code for punch presses?  Or is this a completely stupid idea?

2.  I am envisioning using a mill drilling operation as a stand-in for the punch operation.  But I would need to get rid of the associated spindle speed and feed rate in the post.

3.  There are a variety of different punch shapes, so I would need to generate custom "drill" shapes.

Thanks for any help.

[Anonymous]

I used a program called Striker at my last job. I'm not really sure how much it cost.

[kb9ydn]

In theory it should be possible with a custom post processor.  Do you have a sample file that gets sent to the press?

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[George-Roberts]

So it literally takes in a text file with XY locations? Just use a drill operation and select the reference holes, then have a post only output the XY location (I'll make one in a sec, will take a few min).

With regards to the different shapes, I assume it just takes the XY point in the centre of that shape? You would just need to sketch a reference point or put a hole there which you can select.

Edit: Post processor attached. If you do need just XY locations, use the attached post processor with a drilling operation (must just be normal drilling, literally click 'Drill' select any tool then click the positions). It will output you a text file with the XY positions of each hole 🙂 Let me know if that is what you're after

[kb9ydn]

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@George-Roberts wrote:

So it literally takes in a text file with XY locations? Just use a drill operation and select the reference holes, then have a post only output the XY location (I'll make one in a sec, will take a few min).

With regards to the different shapes, I assume it just takes the XY point in the centre of that shape? You would just need to sketch a reference point or put a hole there which you can select.

Edit: Post processor attached. If you do need just XY locations, use the attached post processor with a drilling operation (must just be normal drilling, literally click 'Drill' select any tool then click the positions). It will output you a text file with the XY positions of each hole 🙂 Let me know if that is what you're after

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If the machine has multiple shapes that it can punch I would expect that it has automatic tool change capability.  Which means that it would need some sort of tool change command in the code.  Unless it's operator programmed and the coordinates have to be entered at the machine somehow.  Of course a sample program would answer this question.  

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