CNC Book

JimG

Western Thunderer
I have been finding out that if you want to get involved in CNC you do need to know about Gcode if you are going to get the best out of your set up.    Gcode is a text based code which controls all the actions of a CNC machine.

You do need to know about the code if you want to control your machinery directly - certainly for simple moves and actions.  There aren't normally any manual controls on a CNC machine so if you want to move anything,  you've got to do it by inputing code.

A problem I have found was finding information about writing or using Gcode.  There were a lot of fairly superficial articles on the web - basically listing the more popular code oeprators with a brief description of what they do,  but I hadn't come across a Gcode programming manual which went deeper into the subject - until a night or two ago when a URL popped up in a yahoo group thread which pointed to a free download of a CNC programming manual.

I've now downloaded it and I'm actually in the process of printing it out so that I can read it in the loo.  :D 

To download the book you have to go to the library page to register first.

http://library.nu/

Once you have registered and logged in,  then search for the book using the following search term - "CNC Programming Handbook Peter Smid"

When the book listing appears on the search results,  click on the book name.  A new page will open with external links to download servers.  Choose the top one - "ifile.it".  When that page opens,  click on "request download ticket".    Then click on download.

I've only had a chance to have a quick glance through the book so far,  but it does seem to provide a good source for knowledge about Gcode.  It might seem a bit heavy,  but it's free a it does seem quite readable.

One health warning.  When I first accessed the book download page on the library site,  I  selected the second download link - "megaupload.com" and got infected by "XP Anti Virus 2011" malware.  It took me the best part of a morning to get rid of it.  If anyone gets clobbered by this,  I've got a good method of getting rid of it so PM me or email me,

Jim.
 

Pugsley

Western Thunderer
Thanks for the info Jim, I've downloaded it for perusing later.  That's an impressive site, there's loads of useful stuff on there.
 

JimG

Western Thunderer
You might also be interested in downloading the Mach3 software to try out your code if you get round to generating some.  Mach3 is the software I use to run my mill and it has an "offline" mode where you can run the Gcode to check if all is well.  You can download the software for free and run it,  but there is a limit of 500 lines of Gcode on what it will accept as an unregistered version. 

The software is available from this web page

http://www.machsupport.com/downloads.php

and the required file is Mach3 R3.043.022

There's a usage guide for the software at

http://www.machsupport.com/documentation.php

I've started to plough through the book and it looks as though it will be a good source of knowledge.  The programming discussion starts at Chapter 7.

Jim.
 

Pugsley

Western Thunderer
Thanks again Jim.  I've got some parts to produce a master for, and I haven't decided yet whether to go down the additive or subtractive route, so playing a bit might help to make my mind up.
 

bogusman

Western Thunderer
I know what you mean cynric as the last time I done any CNC work was way back in 1992. As for using it for wheel profiling is it going to be less time consuming turning them on a normal lathe compared to writing the program and setting up the datum afterwards unless you are doing a large batch of the same wheels then it could be useful.

Pete
 

28ten

Guv'nor
bogusman said:
I know what you mean cynric as the last time I done any CNC work was way back in 1992. As for using it for wheel profiling is it going to be less time consuming turning them on a normal lathe compared to writing the program and setting up the datum afterwards unless you are doing a large batch of the same wheels then it could be useful.

Pete
On half a dozen and upwards i think it is worth it, once the program is written it is dead easy to repeat, and form tools are a pain  :headbang: plus I like to fiddle with that sort of thing  :))
 
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