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HPGL and feed

Posted: Wed Apr 04, 2007 7:42 pm
by edi
The CNC mill I am getting understands HPGL. However, for different materials and drill sizes, I'll have to have different feed rates to be efficient w.o. breaking my drills too often. I can see feed rates for g-code but not for hpgl. Another thing I cannot find but where I am pretty sure it must be somewhere is radius compensation for drill thickness.

Re: HPGL and feed

Posted: Wed Apr 04, 2007 9:38 pm
by andrew
edi wrote:The CNC mill I am getting understands HPGL. However, for different materials and drill sizes, I'll have to have different feed rates to be efficient w.o. breaking my drills too often. I can see feed rates for g-code but not for hpgl.
You can fine-tune the HP/GL output in the machine configuration file (e.g. machines/hpgl.cxm). To do so, you need to know what HP/GL code your machine expects to set the current feed rate.
edi wrote:Another thing I cannot find but where I am pretty sure it must be somewhere is radius compensation for drill thickness.
Unfortunately, this is not something that can be done automatically without the user's decision on which side he wants to compensate. CAM Expert is at the moment mainly focusing on situations in which a fully automatic CAD -> CAM conversion from 2d CAD files is possible (LASER cutting, engraving, gluing, ...).

If your machine supports special codes to enable / disable radius compensation, it is possible to cut all contours in the same orientation (cw or ccw) and apply the radius compensation automatically.