Skipping stations

[Anonymous]

I need to make a 4 station pallet program that will be run multiple times. I won't always have 4 parts to run the full program. Is there a way to create this program, then turn on or off certain stations?

[cfastNJWK6]

Does each pallet run the entire NC program before switching to the other pallet? Or does one tool run on each pallet, then toolchange, then run the next tool on all 4 pallets?

[Anonymous]

One tool will touch each station before tool change

[cfastNJWK6]

Off of the top of my head, I can't think of an easy way to handle this.  There are definitely a lot of different ways to accomplish this, it just depends on how much R&D time you are willing to invest.  You could develop a post-processor that used your machine's macro variables to determine which toolpaths to run. This could get complex in a hurry depending on your machines macro capabilities.

A more simplistic solution would be having multiple NC Programs in your PowerMILL project.  One NC Program for every possible combination of stations.  Then the machine operator just has to pick the correct program to run.  Not an elegant solution by any means.

[Anonymous]

Thank you cfastNJWK6,
Sadly, that was my thought as well. One program for each station. I didn't think of all the combinations of stations but that makes perfect sense. At least I can stop looking and once programmed it will suffice. I appreciate your insight.

[cfastNJWK6]

Just out of curiosity, what type of control does the machine have?

[Anonymous]

Hello cfastNJWK6
I am running a Hermle Mill with a Heidenhain controller

[cfastNJWK6]

I am less familiar with the Heidenhain macro code than Fanuc, but I'm sure you could develop something using Q variables to turn different pallets 'on/off'  At the top of the program you could have:

Q101 = 1

Q102 = 1

Q103 = 1

Q104 = 1

Then before each toolpath, check the value of the corresponding Q variable.  If it == 1, run the toolpath.  IF it does NOT ==1, then skip it.  This way you can control which toolpaths run from the very beginning of the autorun.