Fusion 360's ShopBot PostProcessor Mods

[sbd1]

And judging by the lack of contributors on this thread, there aren't many SB owners using Fusion & tweaking their own post processors. Thanks for your contributions Eric.

[EricSchimel]

No, I think you've interpreted what I'm saying wrong... There aren't too many cases where someone needs to edit a post for Fusion, or Aspire/VCarve. What I'm trying to steer you towards is just setting up your CAM right. Those toggles in the post screen on Fusion are there for a reason, to make common things that you need to change readily available without the need for coding. From what I can gather everything you need can easily be changed by just a couple of toggles, and understanding the tool numbering system that's already in SB3 (and that you're already using and have setup)

You're just a few toggles away from having a really slick setup, do it! You'll appreciate it every time you post a job from any CAM software!

I suspect the lack of contribution is there is really almost no need to edit a post.

[EricSchimel]

PS, just re-reading this and I hope my tone came across as encouraging. You're really close and I think you might be thinking that the things you want to do are harder than they actually are.

Just break the problem down into a few steps and you'll figure it out.

You can learn a lot by posting something of out any CAM software and either looking at the ShopBot Command Reference, or just punching commands into SB3 to see what they do.

[Marc F. Lupien]

Excuse me but there are users of Fusion. ;-P Don't be so fast to «judge»... Maybe the way you use your machine is «special» and others did not encounter the same problems...

Also, Eric is giving you very competent and helpfull information here. I don't see what others could add that would help that much.

signed: «a Fusion 360 user».

[sbd1]

You're both right, maybe my setup or use is not normal or even correct. I've been known to take the long way around a problem to figure it out before. And yes, I appreciate all the patience Eric has shown & the info & insight he has added here. I'll figure it out eventually.

I would be interested in hearing how many SB owners use Fusion, how they've configured their posts to suit their needs.

[Marc F. Lupien]

Personally, I use the post processors as is (both for Vectric VCarve and Fusion).

However, I did change some shopbot files (MTC.sbp and MTCon.sbp) to get rid of some restrictions regarding tool numbers. After a fair bit of reverse engineering on the shopbot files (due to lack of documentation), I found out that tool number is used to drive some CNC operation. Since the CNC can have different tools hooked up to it, Shopbot used a clever hack to start and stop different tools when executing a tool path by assigning tool number to specific tools. For example, tools 1 to 19 are used for the main spindle/router on the Z axis. Other numbers are for drills, etc.

The problem I had was that I wanted to assign different tool numbers for my tools but the shopbot software restricted me to numbers 1 to 19. So the mentionned files were changed to allow me to use tool numbers 100-599 for my CNC router on the Z axis - same as the 1-19 tool numbers. That made more sense when organizing my tool database.

Also, I did create a new post processor for Vectric VCarve to handle my small engraving laser.

[sbd1]

Good to know Marc, thanks. So that means out of 4 people in this thread so far, 3 of us have edited our SB file(s) or CAM software post(s) to suit our needs.

[EricSchimel]

Marc, do you have a big toolchanger on your machine? I'm curious as to why you'd do that... If not an ATC do you have collars on your tools or something like that that would necessitate all of those tool numbers?

SBD, in my experience most people most of the time don't have to edit posts, or other SB files unless they're fairly off the beaten path in terms of what they want to do.