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. |
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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. |
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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. |
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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. |
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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. |
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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. |
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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. |
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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. |
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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. |
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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 |
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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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