Probing Postprocessor for Centroid

[dandonegan]

Just watched the webinar for the upcoming Fusion 360 Ultimate release. The presenters were kind enough to let me know that there is still not a post for Centroid available for this release yet. I'm very interested in taking advantage of the probing / for axis functions that will be available in ultimate. Is there currently a time frame for when a Centroid post might be available for this new release?

dan

[Steinwerks]

Honestly integrating the single-touch probing should not be much of an issue if you know what you need to see in the code. This may require some insight as to the macros your probe uses but it's not very complex.

As to multiaxis, this might be more complex depending on the type of feedrate output needed, such as inverse time. However there is a decent amount of experience out there regarding this functionality so you may not need to wait for an official generic post.

What is your probe, and do you have any documentation on its usage as well as on the 4th-axis implementation?

[dandonegan]

Last year I went through creating a post that would work for my older Hurco machine. I do not want to do that again.

I understand that this product is in development. Part of releasing a new CAD/CAM program is providing a way for it to work with multiple machines. My question is when is the official release from Autodesk going to be for the posts?

dan

[Laurens-3DTechDraw]

Part of supporting an infinity number of machine and controls mean you have to make choices.

So they usually write new stuff for post processors they know what the output should look like.

So haas with Renishaw cycles. Heidenhain with Heidenhain cycles.

So @Steinwerks questions are valid also for the development team. With the info on what your set-up looks like we don't know if a generic centroid is even going to work for you.

[dandonegan]

Steve, I totally understand. I'm talking more about the four and five axis stuff. I will continue to use my centroid canned probing cycles which work very well.

What I don't want to try to do is create the fourth axis post. I'm just hoping that the development guys will start putting out some generic ones like they have done for the base fusion program.

As far as an infinite amount of controllers I also agree that is unrealistic. How about the top 20 which I'm sure will include 7/8 of the market.

dan

[Laurens-3DTechDraw]

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@dandonegan wrote:

Steve, I totally understand. I'm talking more about the four and five axis stuff. I will continue to use my centroid canned probing cycles which work very well.

What I don't want to try to do is create the fourth axis post. I'm just hoping that the development guys will start putting out some generic ones like they have done for the base fusion program.

As far as an infinite amount of controllers I also agree that is unrealistic. How about the top 20 which I'm sure will include 7/8 of the market.

dan

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Haas, Fanuc, Mazak, Heidenhain, Mach, Centroid and many more posts are already set-up for 5-axis.

How to adjust this for your machine see this page. It's just telling the post your kinematics and it should be good to go.

http://forums.autodesk.com/t5/hsm-post-processor-forum/how-to-set-up-a-4-5-axis-machine-configuratio...

[dandonegan]

Thanks Lawrence,

My mistake, in the webinar on ultimate the other day they seem to be inferring that none of the new motion profiles had post support yet.

That being said I would like someone much smarter than me to figure out how to get the probing cycles working for Centroid still. I like working with metal not JavaScript.

Is there some information I can provide to the group to help get the probing cycles for Ultimate working on the Centroid post?

[Steinwerks]

@dandonegan

A probing manual in PDF format would likely be the best thing you can provide. If that's not available, some simple working code to demonstrate syntax, probe on and off, safe moves, etc. would be good as well as a list of cycles.

I believe the current level of probing is quite simple and it shouldn't be difficult to work that into your post.

Also share the post you're currently using if it has at all been modified from the stock Centroid post.

[dandonegan]

Thanks for all the help of the help. I have attached the probing section of the programming manual. Hope it means more to you guys that it means to me.

I understand that the current probing cycles are fairly limited but from what I've seen of the previous development of imagining it will be pretty sophisticated shortly. I do a lot of one of and re-machining work. Being able to put pieces down on the table and pick up on previous geometry is priceless.

dan

[al.whatmough]

@dandonegan can you re-attach the manual or E-mail it to me.   It appears to have disappeared when I moved the post.

[dandonegan]

Again, thanks for all of the help. Here is the probing information for Centroid again. It appears you are not able to apply attachments to this portion of the website. Here is a link to the document.

Probing Section of Centroid Manual

dan

[Anonymous]

 Dan 

Did you ever get anywhere with this? i know this was posted over a year ago

The problem with centroid is that they do not have cycles to call.  The m codes define the type of of move and what input to use but do not define the cycle itself.  In the probing posts they call 9XXX programs that do the probing operation defined IE. measure a boss or probe a corner.  Most of these are renishaw cycles and do not conform to the centroid.  The centroid control does not have a G31PX.  I am currently in the process of modifying a fanuc post (because it has all of the probing built in) and creating some probing macros.  I will let you know if you are interested. 

I have a centroid control (m400) on a small benchtop machine i use it for testing Macros and other things.  I work with Fanuc controls for my day job. 

Marcus

[Anonymous]

Hello, I also have a m400 controller and just recently purchased the DP-4 Probe. I would like to use fusion 360 to program probing cycles. So hello everyone in this thread! I'll be reading and try to advance in getting a post processor working.

[dandonegan]

I never did get anywhere with this. Marcus, I'm sorry I missed your message. Anything you can do to get this to work would be greatly appreciated.

dan

[Anonymous]

I haven't had too much time lately.  Looks like i need to spend some time on this.  I will try to see if i can convert the renishaw g31 move to centroid specific.  The other thing is where the renishaw writes the data the centroid does not use 500 macro varaibles.  well lets see. Hopefully we can come up with something.

Marcus

[Anonymous]

Sure gentlemen, I'm at work right now my, boss is letting me spend some time to get this up and running. Great to know people are interested still!

[Anonymous]

Hi all. I'm running a Centroid controlled mill and I really like the idea of in-program-probing. I'm post machining 3D printed parts with fairly significant dimensional variations (1-2mm over 100mm). My current strategy is to run multiple setups within a single physical setup. CAM generated probing cycles would make this heaps easier. Will keep an eye on this thread.

[Muzzerboy]

Has anyone made any more progress on this?

I'm trying to understand what is involved in modifying the probing sections from eg the Fanuc post to work with Centroid. It's pretty much at the limit of my capabilities, possibly beyond. 

I can see that there are various P9810, P9811 etc calls that would obviously need to be rewritten to make them compatible with the Centroid controller. There's also a hierarchy of functions that get called in the process, about 15 of them, give or take.

Much of the challenge is that so much of the support information is spread widely amongst numerous manuals, code comments etc and a fair amount of reverse engineering is required. Then you need to figure out the sequence of events when a function is called, so you know which other functions are called. It's a lot more convoluted than I'd hoped it would be....