Programming Mazatrol-Based Machine Tools

Manufacturing Engineering, Aug 2005 by Matsler, Mark

SOFTWARE

Manufacturing Engineering: Your software evolved from your work owning a job shop. What led you to create your original off-line programming solution for Mazatrol-based Mazak machines?

Mark Matsler: I bought a Mazak in 1983, and I wanted to be able to communicate to it with a PC. I had experience with serial communications, and using that, I figured out communications with my Mazak. In 1983 Mazak didn't really support that themselves, so once Mazak knew I could do it, they said if I made that available to other people, they would tell them about me. That's how I got into the software business-just to be able to save programs out of the Mazak and keep track of them in a computer.

ME: And you were using it in a production job-shop environment?

Matsler: Yes, it was a small job shop. You'd write a program that you would want to save instead of throwing it away. I wanted to use an existing PC I used for other purposes instead of buying dedicated hardware that would only talk to the Mazak. As time went on in our shop, we realized that if we wanted Mazatrol on the shop floor, we would have to come up with something ourselves to allow us to program off-line. That's how I got started, and it kind of grew from there. What I think one needs to understand is what Mazatrol really is. Mazatrol was introduced in early 80s, before PC-based CAM systems were even going. They didn't exist at that point in time, so you did all your programming for NC by hand or on a real expensive system. Mazatrol evolved to easily program on the shop floor from prints, and even today, 20-plus years later, it's still the best at that particular task.

ME: Do you have to use Mazatrol on a Mazak?

Matsler: You have your choice. The way I look at it, Mazak is the best of both worlds. It has Mazatrol, or it has G code. You can choose one or the other. With Mazatrol, you select the processes that'll produce the features on your part, and it lets you conversationally input the data that define those processes. With the process definition in the control, an operator on the shop floor has great control over what he's doing. During the debug cycle, after you've written a program, the first time you run it you want to make sure the program makes the part you're trying to create. This is when you always want to make little tweaks, like depths of cut, etc, as you hear it run as it actually is cutting the part. Changes to the processes, which control toolpath, are very easy to do on the shop floor with Mazatrol as opposed to a G-code program, which is more or less a toolpath that has been produced off-line where all those process definitions exist off-line on a PC, so what gets loaded into the machine is just the toolpath. Mazatrol really gives you a lot of control on the shop floor.

As time went on in our job shop, PC-based CAM systems began to come out, and we realized that if we wanted Mazatrol on the shop floor because of its ease-of-use, we would have to come up with something ourselves to allow us to program off-line in Mazatrol. We wanted to do the same things that everyone else could do with G-code programs, but we wanted to do it with Mazatrol. We wanted the advantages of Mazatrol on the shop floor, so we had to develop them ourselves.

ME: What does your current Windows-based CamLink software do for users today?

Matsler: It does exactly what we're after, that's why we developed it. It lets you sit at a PC away from the machine tool and create a Mazatrol program in a conversational mode very similar to what people are used to doing at the machine tool itself. The nice thing about it is that it doesn't require a lot of extra learning. If you know how to run your Mazak, you know how to run CamLink.

ME: How can efficient off-line programming improve productivity?

Matsler: You basically are wasting machine time if you sit there and program on the shop floor, so if you're effectively able to program off the shop floor, you alleviate tying up your machine with all that data input. What really helps here is the ability to do it offline; then when we couple with other pieces of software, just like all CAD/CAM systems do, it allows you to be able to bring CAD drawings through an AutoCAD .DXF file into the whole process. That way you can get geometry out of CAD drawings, instead of having to interpret them off of prints. Our software is like a CAD/CAM system, because it allows you to do things in Mazatrol just like any of the other CAM systems that make G-code programs.

ME: What are some of the adjunct programs used with CamLink by Mazak machine users?

Matsler: Our software ties CAD and CAM together just like standard CAD/CAM systems do. We're letting people take the information in a CAD drawing and utilize it to help define the geometry part of a Mazatrol program. It's very important for this step to be in our software. What we have historically done for a long time is use AutoCAD .DXF files, because a .DXF file contains all of the information that is needed to define all the contouring that we're going to put into a Mazatrol program. There is very broad use of .DXF, it's been around for a long time, and it matches the same level that goes right along with Mazatrol. We based our products on coupling .DXF into Mazatrol, but as time has gone on and the CAD industry is obviously headed toward solid modeling, we now have partnered with SolidWorks. We have a product that runs right inside of SolidWorks that will let us extract geometry out of a SolidWorks file and move it right into Mazatrol.