ProNC DNC software program for easy RS232 NC file transfer to CNC machines - free 60 day trial.


ProNC RS232 Setups ProNC has a vast range of RS232 parameters and general settings to make DNC transfer as easy as possible. ProNC will communicate with almost all CNCs that use the standard RS232 protocol. It will not communicate with Mazak using their proprietory Mazatrol language.
Com Port ProNC has predefined baudrates from 150 to 460800. In addition by selecting the slowest baud of 150 the user can define their own custom baudrate, useful for really old CNCs that either go down to as low as 75 baud or for CNC's that have lost their baudrate generator timings on the UART and may be off by a couple of bits per second giving obscure baudrates. Com 1 to com 128 is supported, as are both ASCII/ISO and EIA character sets.
ProNC Com Port Settings
Send Settings ProNC can send sequences of ASCII characters prior to and after the main NC file. This allows you to send non-printable characters that may be required by the cnc to initiate comms.

There are all the standard end-of-block sequences as well as a custom end of block for obscure cnc's.

You can setup a text string so that ProNC will not send any data until it sees this string in the NC code. Useful if your cad/cam post-processor has a tooling sheet at the head of each nc program, it can be totally ignored by the CNC. Similarly, you can set a string to abort transfer after a specific string is detected.

Wait for XON will suspend transfer until your cnc is put into receive mode. Data transfer can be in "block mode" or "byte mode".

Block mode sends each variable length block of the nc code as it reads the file. On many cncs such as a Fanuc this can cause over-run, so we have developed a byte-mode which only sends data in fixed byte lengths, this can cure some obscure over-run problems.
ProNC RS232 Send Settings
Receive Settings One of the problems when receiving files off a cnc is that they often use invisible control codes as part of their comms initialization, or they can send codes for old magnetic tape devices. When you send these back to the cnc without modification, they can cause errors because the cnc does not expect to see them sent back.

ProNC allows you to strip all data received before and after specific ASCII codes. In addition you can discard all non-printables below ASCII 32. End-of-Block is automatically detected if possible, or you can specify the end-of-block implicitly.
ProNC RS232 Receive Settings
Folder Settings ProNC allows you to setup two separate folders, one for send - files that have been proven and ready to send back to the cnc, and a receive folder - for files that have been received off the cnc and have yet to be proven because they may have been modified by the cnc operator. Of course, these folders can be the same if you trust your operators. In addition, you can setup any file extension you want - the default is TXT - but it can be anything or even no extension at all.
ProNC RS232 Folder Settings
Remove ProNC lets you remove up to 8 specific text strings that would be difficult to remove otherwise, they may be inside the program for example.
ProNC RS232 Remove Settings
DNC Commands If you choose to buy the remote DNC version of ProNC, the DNC commands are the settings that allow you to send and receive files between your computer and your cnc's without having to walk over to the computer, it is all done at the cnc control. The trial version allows you to use the remote functions.
ProNC RS232 DNC Commands
To enable ProNC to understand what you actually want to do, be it to send a file to your CNC or receive a file back from your CNC, you need to setup your DNC commands. These commands can be permanently stored in your CNCs memory as very small NC files and each time you want to send or receive a file you edit the filename portion of the DNC command so that ProNC now knows which command and file you want. You then punch this small file OUT of your CNC via the RS232 port and immediately put your CNC into receive mode - some time later ProNC will send the file you requested.

All you need do is setup these commands and make sure that what you setup is the same at the ProNC and CNC ends. Basically, a CNC command block is made up of 3 simple parts... 1. the command 2. the filename(s) 3. the End Request Character

Example:- The small program below is punched out of the CNC control and then the CNC is immediately put into receive mode.

%
(/GET 1000)
%

ProNC will receive this small file, and send back the file "1000" from your selected folder, with the file extension that you specify.

Saving a file off your cnc can be as easy as punching out a program from your cnc. The autoname function in ProNC will take the program number out of the received file, and save it away with that filename. Otherwise you can embed the filename inside the NC code, punch it out, and whatever filename you have embedded will get saved away with that file. Useful if you cannot edit some characters at the control or can't edit comments.
ProNC RS232 DNC Commands
In addition to simple upload and download, ProNC will let you merge files, queue files, repeat files and restart after a toolbreak at a specific numbered block.
ProNC RS232 DNC Commands
If a requested file does not exist in the default folder, it will drill down any sub-folders trying to find this file, if one is found it will send the first one that it finds. You can also define an "unallocated folder" so that anything sent from the CNC which cannot be interpreted by ProNC (maybe because of operator error) is saved away in this folder with a specific time stamp. That way, an operator can never lose any data he sends thinking he has stored it away and then delete it out the cnc memory. Everything is always saved away for inspection at a later date.
ProNC RS232 Backup Settings
There are several different modes of saving received files off the cnc. The simplest is to just overwrite any file that already exists with the latest data. Or you can make a backup of the file, and then overwrite the original. Or you can make a backup with a datestamp so nothing is ever overwritten - useful for full audit trail of received files, or you can save the file away with an auto-incremented file extension, .001, .002, .099 etc
ProNC RS232 Messages Settings
After a transfer, it is possible to setup messages that will be returned back to the cnc to tell the operator that the file has been sent, received or a mistake has been made.
 
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DNC software system, CNC RS232 file transfer, free trial DNC programs, Drip Feed
DNC software for easy RS232 CNC file transfer - great value for machine shops of all sizes