Shopbot and Visual Mill

[multihull]

I am new to this forum but it seems to have a lot of useful information. We are currently using a shopbot with visual mill. The problem we are having is in the post processing of G code into shopbot code in the visual mill post processor. The area we are having problems with is the drill command or g81 drill code. The post processor allows you to define the different commands into shopbot code but I do not know what shopbot commands to use. The shopbot code is so simple that it does not have many of the code supportted in g code. I was wondering if any one else has had this problem and if there is an easy fix. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

[grant]

Christian, as I told you in the email I sent you yesterday, there are ways to do drilling cycles in ShopBot code easily, but they are not Gcode. If you are using the appropriate postprocessor in Visualmill you should not be getting any Gcode commands with the possible exception of CG arcs, which is a command we support. It sounds like, as I mentioned in the email I sent you day before last, that you are using the wrong postprocessor.

The people on the forum will probably be able to help you to define a drilling cycle, but you will also find information in the command reference manual index in the user's guide. You could also take me up on my offer to help and call ShopBot whenever it is convenient. Despite the fact that we don't use standard Gcode and the commands appear simple, there is a lot of logic and complex tasks that can be automated when you fully understand our language. In particular you will want to read up on subroutines and goto commands. You can also look at the ShopBot newsletter before last - I believe it can be found on the website. I wrote a tutorial for the tips and tricks section that explained how to define a drilling cycle.

Best regards,

Grant Bailey
ShopBot Tools Inc.
1-888-680-4466
grant@shopbottools.com (mailto:grant@shopbottools.com)