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How are the Fusion posts for brother machines?

DevinJB

Plastic
Joined
Aug 1, 2021
I'll be starting a new job soon programming and running brother machines. The shop is currently using Gibbscam but wants to trial Fusion 360.

I've done some minor post editing on the generic Doosan posts, and I was wondering if there are any "day one" changes that should be made to the generic fusion posts for brother machines, and how involved they are?

As a side note, is it possible to get pdfs of programming/operator manuals for brother anywhere? I don't know exactly version controls the shop has but they have 15 brother speedios/TC32BNs ranging from 1-10 years old
 
There are some good ones out there. A few smart people are doing some neat things with the precision/surfacing modes. "ModeB"

Normally I just wrap a tight tolerance finish in a pass through M281 The cool guys are doing it automatically. Should find those posts on the HSM Autodesk forum

Email Yamazen and they should have the PDF of the correct manual for each machine family.
 
I haven't found any posts that work "perfect" for the Speedio. The one I use now is pretty good except I have to manually input the correct pitch for I and J, fix anything using P for dwell and manually place any model A or B codes. Also using the M141 post and it too is not perfect but is workable.
 
Wow, what a horror story! The hobbyist was getting it for free for 4 years and then the bastards changed their policy and he had to pay, although it doesn't sound like he really qualified for free Fusion. I wonder what he had to fork out for Solidworks and MC? I doubt that was all free.

I too am curious about Brother posts for Fusion. Do you really need to get them from individuals vs the AD supplied ones?

Damn, there are only three posts to choose from in AD's library. The Speedio post prefetches tools, is that right?
 

I'm not too concerned about Fusion to be honest. I've been using it for 2 years with no problems, and quite enjoyed it. I much prefer it over gibbscam in just about every respect, and while mastercam is more customizable and is probably more robust in 3d machining, I find the workflow in fusion much quicker.

I feel for those who were using it as hobbyists, but working for a company who has no problem paying for the full license I don't see that There's much to worry about. Any of the Cam packages could leave you high and dry by increasing the price of their maintenance packages. Fusion being cloud and subscription based is a fair tradeoff for a capable cad/cam that costs less per year than most other CAM's maintenance fee alone.
 
Please, for the love of god, just answer this guy's question instead of turning it into another Autodicks thread.

The "Brother Speedio" post is serviceable but not optimized. I've made significant changes and am working on getting my version in a state that I'm comfortable sharing, but the stock post will get you by.
 
Wow, what a horror story! The hobbyist was getting it for free for 4 years and then the bastards changed their policy and he had to pay, although it doesn't sound like he really qualified for free Fusion. I wonder what he had to fork out for Solidworks and MC? I doubt that was all free.

I too am curious about Brother posts for Fusion. Do you really need to get them from individuals vs the AD supplied ones?

Damn, there are only three posts to choose from in AD's library. The Speedio post prefetches tools, is that right?

From my experience with the Doosan posts, it's fairly simple to make your own basic edits to the post, there are tutorials out there on how to do it and test the post using a plugin for microsoft visual studio code. If you're interested I can try to dig up the links to the tutorials.

The only edits I had to make were assigning the Mcodes for through spindle coolant and air, and removing a few extraneous lines of code that weren't specific to our machines. Any edits more complicated than that probably would have been over my head though. I understand there are 3rd party developers who can customize posts, but I have no idea what that would cost.
 
I haven't found any posts that work "perfect" for the Speedio. The one I use now is pretty good except I have to manually input the correct pitch for I and J, fix anything using P for dwell and manually place any model A or B codes. Also using the M141 post and it too is not perfect but is workable.

Model A or B? Would that be a smoothing function?
 
There are some good ones out there. A few smart people are doing some neat things with the precision/surfacing modes. "ModeB"

Normally I just wrap a tight tolerance finish in a pass through M281 The cool guys are doing it automatically. Should find those posts on the HSM Autodesk forum

Email Yamazen and they should have the PDF of the correct manual for each machine family.

BROTHERFRANK was kind enough to hook me up with the manuals.

Are there multiple steps to the precision/surfacing modes? Like in fanuc where you can turn smoothing off completely or on with a setting of R1 through R10, 10 being the smoothest? or is it just on/off?
 
Please, for the love of god, just answer this guy's question instead of turning it into another Autodicks thread.

The "Brother Speedio" post is serviceable but not optimized. I've made significant changes and am working on getting my version in a state that I'm comfortable sharing, but the stock post will get you by.

Please let us know if you get it to the point where you're comfortable sharing! How involved are the edits? I've made some basic changes to posts before but I have no programming experience outside of Gcode and basic macro editing.
 
From my experience with the Doosan posts, it's fairly simple to make your own basic edits to the post, there are tutorials out there on how to do it and test the post using a plugin for microsoft visual studio code. If you're interested I can try to dig up the links to the tutorials.

The only edits I had to make were assigning the Mcodes for through spindle coolant and air, and removing a few extraneous lines of code that weren't specific to our machines. Any edits more complicated than that probably would have been over my head though. I understand there are 3rd party developers who can customize posts, but I have no idea what that would cost.
I can and do basic edits so it looks like the generic post will work for me when the time comes. I've been using Fusion since the beginning and have figured out what I need to modify the posts for the most part, my biggest problem is not knowing JavaScript.
 
I used fusion briefly with my A00 control Brother mill. I can't remember what all I had to do but I made a few simple changes to an existing post and had it up and running pretty quickly. The I/J issue with tapping might be a challenge if you live in an imperial world and do metric tapping as I do or vise versa. I didn't get this far with fusion but it was a challenge with SW CAM/Camworks. At worst you can manually edit your tapping code until you can get it working if it's an issue.

I still don't have the G100 combined tool change/move implemented.
 
The stock post has been working for me with very basic edits, like I deleted the line sending the table to X zero at the end of the program.

It does output G100 properly, no issue there. Tapping is also perfect, but I don't deal with metric so maybe that's the hang up Peroni was talking about.

I did map an M code to a solenoid for air blast on the machine, and edited the post to match, again very straight forward.

It does not output M260-M269 (Mode A, don't have Mode B).
 
The stock post has been working for me with very basic edits, like I deleted the line sending the table to X zero at the end of the program.

It does output G100 properly, no issue there. Tapping is also perfect, but I don't deal with metric so maybe that's the hang up Peroni was talking about.

I did map an M code to a solenoid for air blast on the machine, and edited the post to match, again very straight forward.

It does not output M260-M269 (Mode A, don't have Mode B).

Ok fantastic, I was specifically wondering if any finagling would have to be done to get G100 to work.

Side question: M260-M269, could you explain the function of these codes? I'm guessing it's an adjustment for how accurate point to point movements are? Or how many lines the controller looks ahead? Similar to the Fanuc G05.1 Q1 R[1-10]?
 
Those M codes enable high accuracy modes that tighten up the servos so the cut path is closer to the programmed path. You can set how they work in a parameter page, and should probably check what is there before using them. On my old Yasnac control I have something similar. I just added the code to turn it on with a G41 and off with a G40 in my post processor, since that is really the only time I need the higher accuracy. The looser servo settings without them enabled is easier on your machine so you don't want to use them when not needed.
 
I'm not an expert by any means, member gkoenig is the resident expert on high accuracy modes. Brother defaults to wide open, fast and loose, which apparently contributes to the lightning fast speeds.

The M265 setting that my machines came set with work well when things do need tightened up, although wide open works for a lot of parts and I just run a sane speed on the finish pass.

David's suggestion about having it turn on with G41 makes a lot of sense, I'm going to try that. Some guys have tried linking it to the tolerance, which also makes sense but is harder to implement.
 
Ok fantastic, I was specifically wondering if any finagling would have to be done to get G100 to work.

Devin, G100 has worked perfect for me, no change needed. I just checked, it's the "Brother Speedio" post; it has been updated since I downloaded and did my edits, so proceed with caution but it should be good.

On a side not, I'm experimenting with SolidCAM right now, and that post processor is way harder to understand and edit. The flip side is that maybe SolidCAM is more powerful, at least that's the claim.
 
Side question: M260-M269, could you explain the function of these codes? I'm guessing it's an adjustment for how accurate point to point movements are? Or how many lines the controller looks ahead? Similar to the Fanuc G05.1 Q1 R[1-10]?

Brother has 2 algorithms for dealing with accuracy, path interpolation, and point smoothing. Mode A and Mode B.

Mode A is an older technology that intervenes at the servo level, Mode B is a more advanced algorithm that works higher up in the pipeline, at the path interpolation level. That means a Speedio is processing each line of code, developing the raw servo commands, and sending the results to Mode A for it to work it's magic. Mode B is actually taking over the path interpolation level before any servo commands get calculated.

While Mode A is older, it is a superior (i.e. faster for the same level of accuracy) system for prismatic parts machining and adaptive roughing/HSM applications. Most Brothers in the world are drilling, tapping, facing, and side milling a handful of profiles... for them, Mode A is ideal. It's acceleration profiles are very efficient when dealing with prismatic code, so it is faster than Mode B while maintaining higher accuracy on these kinds of parts. Mode A does some path smoothing on complex surfaces, but it is limited to only 20 lines of look ahed for these applications.

Mode B is primarily for complex surfacing applications. It wants to be fed a stream of G1 moves (i.e. no smoothing out code with fitted G2/G3 arcs), with a tight tolerance. Mode B's primary skill is very fast acceleration control and interpolation - in other words, it is going to take that pile of G01 moves that describe a complex surface and turn them into very nice surfaces with the curve originally intended in the CAD file (or close to it). All Speedios ship with Mode B, but you can optionally buy Mode BII which increases the look ahed to 200 lines and allows you to control the level of smoothing applied to complex contour code.

(Note; Look Ahed in a Brother C-00 control is purely for better path interpolation by allowing Mode B to see further into the code. It is NOT a buffer for preventing code starving because these machines simply do not need it - they are processing each block in 1ms. I've worked hard in testing to code starve my Speedio and I've never been able to do it).

Mode A and B in Brother World combine a lot of functions that Fanuc breaks out into separate technologies. Mode A is akin to AI Contour Control for acceleration control. Mode B is like AICC + Nano Smoothing. Mode A is better than anything Fanuc has for prismatics and in production environments, is often responsible for a 5-10% performance gain over Robodrills on those parts. By contrast, I think Robodrill's AICC + Nano Smoothing is a superior system in intense 3D surfacing applications.

In the Speedio, Mode A was called with a series of M26x codes, while Mode B was called with codes in the M28x range... and this situation has been damn confusing to literally everybody. Especially since we all assumed Mode B was newer therefor must be better at everything, so why not use it all the time? We assumed the only reason Mode A was kept around is because a LOT of facilities that run Brother machines cannot make any modification to the G-code - a Speedio absolutely needs to run the same G-code as the older machines in the fleet.

Brother is solving this by introducing a new High Accuracy Quick Setting function; basically a single interface that can use both Mode A and Mode B with a series of "Modes" with logical names (Rough, Finish, Standard, etc) and a new set of M298 Ln codes to call it.

The nice thing about the Quick Setting function is that I've got 10 slots, any one of which can use Mode A or B as I see fit. "Rough" in my machine is set up for high-speed Adaptive Roughing paths with .03" stock allowances. "Semi Finish S" is set up to use Mode B, lose smoothing, and modest acceleration for semi-finishing applications. Finishing for me is still set to Mode A, while Finishing S uses Mode B - and I choose the appropriate one based on the exact kind of geometry I'm machining. I use NX, where we have the "Method" system to set various things about our path, and my post calls the M298 Ln codes based on that method.

Quick Setting also has sort of a simplified mode that is based on absolute accuracy (i.e. you can only deviate 0.0001" from the programmed path, or you can deviate 0.010"). The screen with the blue graphs on it allows an operator to "tune" the modes with a little more/less smoothing or deceleration. I find both of these functions sort of useless.
 
This is fantastic and very helpful, thank you for your detailed response! It's one thing to read some dry info in a manual but this provides some much needed context.

Maybe this is a dumb question, does mode B completely replace mode A for surfacing? Or would you have a mode A setting active as well as turning on mode B for surfacing?
 








 
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