Macros in Mazatrol

[knobhead]

I've just started using Mazak's own CAMWARE program to produce Mazatrol programs.

I've sort of inherited the role of programming our various Mazaks from one of our engineers who left, and he used a lot of ISO subprograms, called within the Mazatrol program.

Thing is, nearly all of these subprograms are identical, with just one or two numbers changed to suit the particular job, which seems to me to be the perfect thing to set up a macro for.

Now, I know camware can cope with macros in ISO code. I've even found the little dialog box in which you can define the variables.

What I can't find is an example of what form the variables need to be in the ISO macro itself. We have a VERY fast turnaround shop, so I don't have the oppurtunity to best-guess and see what happens, as if I get it wrong I will hold things up. Of course, if I can get macros working I'll speed things up considerably, but I'm not even going to try and attempt to explain what a macro is to my boss.

So, in the dialog box is a pull down to select the 'sequence number'. Does this mean the line number the variable will appear in in the ISO code?

Also, in the ISO macro itself: If I've designated in the dialog box the letter 'A' to be, say, 4.5, does that mean I enter a line in the ISO macro along the lines of
G01 XA Z25 and it will substitute the 'A' for 4.5?

Anyone know what the hell I'm going on about?

Excessive accuaracy is a sign of poor breeding. -Socrates.

 

[brengine]

Macros are VERY useful for many repetative/similiar tasks. I have no experience with a Mazak tho. I do believe that their G-code is similiar to the Fanuc language. I would try these first:

http://www.cncci.com

http://www.programmingunlimited.com

Ken

 

[knobhead]

The G code it uses is standard ISO code, so yeah, it is Fanuc basically.

I've no problem programming in G code, in fact I've more experience of that than mazatrol. What I don't know is how to write a ISO macro with variables for use with mazatrol, AND call it from a mazatrol program. I'm not sure how the camware dialog works to call the macro, and I'm not sure what the mazatrol expects the variables in the ISO program to look like.

Excessive accuaracy is a sign of poor breeding. -Socrates.