Drill Web cycle?

[nlehman]

 The drill web cycle works properly through creo when playing the toolpath, but when it posts out it does not work.

I see that the web drill sequence outputs a CYCLE/THRU in the CLDATA, and according to the GPOST literature, if your control does not have a hardware cycle for CYCLE/THRU (ours doesn't) and set it to NA, then it will force GPOST into software mode.  The issue is, it seems that GPOST even in software, deals with CYCLE/THRU differently than Creo does.

Does anyone have any ideas on how to get this to work correctly, or possibly even have a working FIL for reference?

[KenFarley]

If Creo is able to generate the toolpath, it will usually be able to play it. Makes sense, since Creo is creating the instructions that it then uses to simulate tool motions. You can have all sorts of settings that will not work with the post processor you are using, but Creo will still be able to show you what the toolpath *should* do.

The second part of your question seems to exactly describe what you need to do. You need to find or write a post processor that formats the G-code in a manner that is acceptable to your machine. You might already have that? If you have the post processor, you also need to figure out what parameter settings are necessary in your Creo toolpath definitions that will put out .ncl code that is acceptable for your post processor.

I don't really know what a "drill web" cycle is, so I can't be of much help. Also, post processors are machine-specific, so it helps if people know what kind of machine you are trying to create code for.

[nlehman · Accepted solution]

Drill WebI was able to get this resolved with Fred's help at AustinNc.  The issue is that the formatting of CL data that Creo dumps out for a web drill cycle is slightly different than Gposts.  I would have just imagined that since Gpost is bundled with Creo, Creo would have made sure that their format matched up so that it worked out of the box.

Anyways, what a web drill cycle in Creo does, is when you are drilling through more than one surface, it allows you to rapid (or feed fast) to the next surface instead of continuing at the initial drills feed.

[KenFarley]

That is a really cool feature. I'd imagine it'd save you lots of time.

Creo, and every other post-processor (all I've tried) is terrible at estimating time for drilling cycles, by the way. It seems to always calculate the time as if you are doing a simple drill from start to finish in one go cycle. It's horrible at peck cycles and the like, always gives a time that is shockingly low.

Anyway, yeah, sometimes what you get out of Creo is not exactly right, but then the post-processor has to be customized to deal with the troubles. It's part of the "fun" of manufacturing, I guess.