Horizontal to Vertical & back to Horizontal

[Dave Ball]

I want your guys opinion. How do you program a part that could be ran on a horizontal and/or a verticle. I'm just trying to pick the best method for our shop.

[mtnflyr]

We run vertical jobs on the horizontals occasionally if the verticals are backed up. Typically they run the same way as on the vertical. These would be basic two op parts.

 

Most jobs that are specific to the horizontals are not worth moving to a vertical. Too many extra setups.

[Rick Henrickson 65]

make a new machine group in your op manager, copy ops from horizontal "you will need to add ops for side work, amke a new wcs relative to the vertical or horizontal, change your c/t planes regen and post

[SLJ]

Most of the ones I've done were on the vertical 1st, no indexes. This way you can just post them out to the horiz. or in our case, with the same tool library up to #30, we can run the vert. program with no changes.

[Alvaro Gil - Cimquest-inc.com]

There is only one difference between the horizontal post and the vertical post. The horizontal switch inside the post will actually map the top plane to the front plane. So in effect is will simply rotate the coordinate system 90 degrees so it APPEARS you are standing in front of the machine.

 

Why even bother with this??? Well, it makes programing a horizontal very fast. You can place all your Gview buttons on the toolbar for Front, Back Right and Left. This way all you need to do is click them and make a toolpath, you can make all 4 sides very quickly. Note this will only work with a horizontal post.

 

So in short there are two ways to program a horizontal:

 

1 - with a horizontal post in the front, back, right and left planes.... (only compatible with horizontal machines) Note: you can always change the wcs of all planes before posting with a vertical post.

 

2 - with a vertical post. You will simply have to make new view planes, since the front, back, right and left do not rotate about the correct axis. Since you are on the top plane you need to define correctly oriented "right", "back" and "left" planes. (method is compatible with verticals)

 

 

Comprende? This is hard to grasp at first. Let me know if you want me to document this better!

[Dave Ball]

I understand how to program both vert & horz machines. I was just wondering what is the easiest/best method to use the same program for both style machines. I thought there may be some good ideas I wasn't aware of.

[Alvaro Gil - Cimquest-inc.com]

The only tip I have is for using a vertical post to program a horizontal.

 

Create a template that has all your planes in it, and any other info you want. For example I have one with a Tombstone, 4 planes and offsets that always correspond to those planes.

[Dave Ball]

Thanks Al, That is exactly what I do now, except my templates have the operations also, since I'm dealing with families of parts.