No Plunge or Retract? and BUG!!

[Gerry]

After an hour of banging my head against the wall, it appears that MeshCAM doesn't support RETRACT_MOVE and PLUNGE_RATE_MOVE?

Plunging does, however, work correctly, with one exception, using the following info in the post:
FIRST_FEED_RATE_MOVE = "G1 [X] [Y] [Z] [F]"

This line gets duplicated in the g-code, with different feedrates. For example, if you lunge at 50, and cut at 100, you'll get:

G1 Z-.25 F50
G1 Z-.25 F100

Imo, the second line should be omitted and the F100 placed on the following line. You shouldn't have duplicate moves with the same coordinates.

As for the Retract_Move, I'm trying to write a post for our Morbidelli router at work. It doesn't need the rapid moves, so I'd like to use Retract_Move to make the retract a G1 move. I only need the single rapid move to the start of the plunge.

Any ideas?

[robgrz]

You're right- it's a huge gaping bug. I have the code to read the RETRACT_MOVE variable but it's never used in the code. I'll have to dig into this and see if I can make a clean change without breaking anything.

I don't see any reference to PLUNGE_RATE_MOVE in my code so that would be a bigger change.

-Robert

[Randy]

Robert, plunge rate move does seem to be kind of a hanging issue--on Dec. 3, 2005 you wrote (message 1791 in the old Yahoo group archives in the "PLUNGE_RATE_MOVE question for Robert" discussion)

I just looked through my code and realized that plunge_rate_move never got implemented. The plunge rate speed in respected but everything is done as a feed_rate_move.

but then on Nov. 27, 2006 (message 2232 in the "When are plunge rate moves issued?" discussion ) you wrote

The plunge rate is only used at the start of a move when the tool is entering the stock.

so it sounds like you did do some work on it (or just conceptualizing?)

Randy

[robgrz]

I do vaguely remember the 2005 message so I guess I should finally fix it. I'll try to get it done tonight.

-Robert

[robgrz]

Turned out to be easy- RETRACT_MOVE is now working.

-Robert

[Gerry]

Thanks, I think I have a pretty good post now. I think I just need to delete the initial retract and it should run. Although today I tried loading a 70,000 line program and it wouldn't take it.

Are you going to fix the duplicate move, and move the feedrate to the next line?

[robgrz]

I'll take a look at those next. I wanted to get that retract move fix out to you as soon as possible.

-Robert