Engraving

[Cheenist]

I’ve been lurking here for about a year and absorbing tons of great info. I have a small CNC shop with a Haas VF-2 machining center, Haas SL-20 lathe with live tooling and an 1982 Bridgeport retrofitted with a three axis Acu-Rite cnc. All programming is done with GibbsCam. I have a customer that needs his parts engraved with sequential serial numbers…increasing by one on each part. My 1994 Haas VF-2 does not have macros and does not recognize a G47 engraving cycle. The local Haas dealer wants 1500.00 to install an updated version of software….ouch!! I have several hundred of these parts to make. Any ideas?
Thanks,
Carl

 

[cncrunner]

Gibbscam supports engraving letters and numbers. Look at the geometery pallet and choose the shapes icon. under that choose the letter icon.
Bill.

 

[Cheenist]

cncrunner,
It’s not the engraving I’m having a problem with. I need to have the part number increase by one with each part run. The first part would be, 001 and the second 002…003 and so forth. Sorry I wasn’t more clear. If you ever need help with GibbsCam just ask, I’ve been using it for ten years now.
Thanks,
Carl

 

[WILLEO6709]

I think haas works kinda like fanuc macro B, but I don't have an algorithm to do what you want. I thnk I could set you up on an a2100, but anything fanuc/ haas and it gets funny to do. what you would have to have would be a macro for each number and a non resettable counter that would call the macro for the count. by the time you do all that you could just stamp them while the next part is running. Are they spec'd machine engraved? I agree it'd be cool to engrave sequentially in the machine, but would be time consuming to rig up for a 1 time deal

 

[Cheenist]

WILLEO6709,
Thanks, yes the drawing calls for machine engraving...these are space parts so no pounding and hand engraving is not an option. I've made lots of these parts in the past, this is something the customer(a very good customer)wants to add.
Carl

 

[fooltool]

acu-rite would be the quickest. set up part in fixtured set up. change digit in program and move on.