Question on AlphaCam

I was catching up with a buddy of mine the other day and he was giving me the rundown of the shop he works in. Right now he's doing some programming and he's using Alphacam to program an Onsrud router.

He told me that the company does not have the right level of Alphacam software for him to be able to edit the post processor. I pressed him for more information and basically he tells me that the software has 3 ("maybe 4") different levels for purchase. His company currently has the 2nd level and in order to successfully edit the post they would need to upgrade to the next level. Claims that he can open the post and edit it, save it, but when he makes certain changes he'll get an error upon trying to generate code or nothing will happen at all.

Although I understand that purchasing different levels unlocks different features, it seems strange to me that editing a post processor would be a leveled feature. The whole conversation started when he rattled off the Fanuc controller that's on his machine and wondered if I happened to know of any parameters that would deal with changing the modality of G90/G91 commands. Evidently he's having issues with the post throwing out G91s without G90s and vice versa, and he misses some of these things when going through and making edits. He didn't say whether this has resulted in any serious problems...acting more like it's just a regular pain in the ass.

I'm just curious if the information he was giving me is accurate? He also claims that Alphacam won't even makes the changes to the post for the company...as in, for money. Just seems strange to me is all.

I don't know Alphacam, so not much help there, but if I were him, I'd be talking to the guys at CR Onsrud, I know a few of them personally and I know they have or at least had someone in house that knew Alphacam fairly well. It is probably not their job to mess with it, but I am sure they have run into similar in the past. At my old job I had 2 Onsrud routers and we ran Mastercam, I got more help from Onsrud techs with mastercam things than anyone else, worth a shot anyway.

Thanks man. I'll let him know.

Doesn't look like Alphacam is the hottest of topics on this wing of the forum...

Ha, yeah this is the first time I have seen it mentioned at all. I think it is mostly in the wood world and while there are people on here that have cnc routers, it's not often discussed.

Alphacam has four main levels(lowest to highest), Essential,Standard,Advanced,and Ultimate. Alphacam has VBA (Visual Basic Applications) built into the software. Most post processors in Alphacam are VBA macros, which can only be created and edited with the Advanced level or higher.

Most of the post processors have a GUI or a front end interface to make small modifications like table positioning and offsets, but they don't allow for major logic changes. I would check to see if there is a place to change Absolute or Incremental in that interface. If not the logic in the post will need to be modified.

Typically whomever wrote the post will need to take responsibility for it. Mainly for the fact that most VBA projects are password protected. If I had to guess Onsrud provided that post and should be able modify it, they might want $$$ though.

Tell him to tell Onsrud he would be interested in a new machine, but his post doesn't work properly. You will be amazed how fast they get that thing fixed. Haha...Only kidding