Fusion 360 inspection reports for Tormach mills

[@loupitou06fl]

Absolutely would like to see more details and can't wait to try it myself with the active and passive probe and compare the results

[@centurialinc]

Love it. I wish Mach 3 and 4 did this. That's what I'm currently using. I wonder if this could be adapted to Mach 3.

[@daleksw]

My wcs probing routines for Fusion were originally developed on Mach 3. You can get the results at xoomspeed.com/CNC/mach3/mach3goodies.htm Never went as far as doing the inspection stuff though and I don't have anything with Mach3 anymore. I think the hard bit would be getting the text items into the results. The program name, comment, date and time and the operation names.

[@MrJTJINX]

Happy New Year buddy

[@daleksw]

You too

[@tdg911]

So basically we can use our mills as a cmm? This is badass.

[@daleksw]

that's about the size of it, yes!

[@stevetriton1060]

Would love to see a in-depth dive in an other video!! Wondering if it would work for Mach3?

[@daleksw]

Mach3 would actually have been easier, since the vbscript environment has much better file handling. Do you have the Mach version of the wcs probing routines already?

[@stevetriton1060]

@@daleksw Hi David! How’s the progress on the inspection report feature coming along? I have since moved moved on to PathPilot “Tormach 440”. Cheers from North Carolina, USA!

[@daleksw]

@@stevetriton1060 I now have the software on my webshop at shop.xoomspeed.com/collections/frontpage/products/xoomspector and if you're not using it already, grab a free copy of my post-processor from xoomspeed.com/CNC/FusionPostProcessor.htm That's all you need to get it working. There are a few people out there who've used it and run tests to establish how repeatable the mills are and I think you'll be pretty surprised at what our little machines can do! I did have alook at Mach 3, but I just couldn't see a way to get the text into a logfile. Numbers are easy, but getting the descriptions into the output file was going to be a real pain. Glad you switched to PathPilot! To be fair though, this is the first time I've come across something PathPilot achieves much easier than Mach3.

[@abarasabwehttam]

David are you still offering this? I think this would make my inspections for Xometry much easier. I am using SolidWorks with HSM (F360 CAM). Would your plugin work for that also? I have the F360 paid version but only pay for it to be able to use HSM with Solidworks.

[@daleksw]

Yes, it's still available. post-process from my website xoomspeed.com/CNC/FusionPostProcessor.htm and the formatted report generator from my shop shop.xoomspeed.com/collections/cnc-accessories/products/xoomspector I'm not sure, but I suspect the post-processor will just work with HSM anyway, in which case itr's pretty easy.

[@CEMBerthoud]

Great video!

[@loupitou06fl]

I was able to run this today with my active probe and this weekend I will run it again with the (soon to be wireless) passive probe and share the results. One question David, with your postprocessor, the head retracts all the way up during tool change and between ops (regardless if I choose G30z or G28z option - any idea why ?

[@daleksw]

If either of the tools involved isn't in an ATC, then the M6 instruction forces a retract to max z regardless. Could this be what you're seeing?

[@loupitou06fl]

@@daleksw that is correct, my probe isn't in the ATC (yet 😃). I thought I could define a safe retract height with G28.1 and then 8se the G28z option but it doesn't seem to work.

[@daleksw]

@@loupitou06fl Afraid I can't do anything about M6's normal behaviour. The really annoying thing is if you have an ATC and neither of the tools involved in a change are in the carousel, then it forgets to do the retract and expects you to do the change wherever the head happens to be. If it's running a program at the time, the jog controls don't work, so you're stuck.

[@loupitou06fl]

@@daleksw Looking at your video again, your probe doesn't go up between the first 2 probe operations (finding the WCS X-Y then Z), mine does even in between these ops - I will dive in the g-code produced and try to understand. Last question David, is it possible to specify the path for the inspection log file ? I have a dropbox folder that I would like to write on. Thanks

[@daleksw]

@@loupitou06fl After every machining operation, the head retracts to the clearance height specified on the heights tab for that op. I've just got it down at model top + 5mm or something around that. Afraid the inspection file path is hard coded (ngc files don't have any string variables), but you can do it as I did and make the output folder a network share.

[@Leejon57]

Sweet, but can I afford it?

[@daleksw]

I wasn't planning on asking a huge amount for the report generator. It needs a small amount of additional work just to make it easy to select a custom logo and/or document template, but once that's done, I'll out it up on the shop. How does $100 sound for a perpetual licence with updates?

[@stevetriton1060]

Yes, I do have probing routines for WCS.