Hand coding vs conversational programming on the same part

I ran the same bracket job two ways last month on our Haas VF-2. Hand coded it took me 38 minutes of tweaking and two test cuts, but the conversational software finished the toolpath in 12 minutes with no wasted moves. Am I missing something or is conversational programming just flat out better for one-off parts?

2 comments

2 Comments

fiona13017d ago

Did you ever feel like hand coding was the "real" way to do things? I was totally in that camp for years, thought conversational was cheating somehow. Then I did a similar test on a bracket with a bunch of weird radii and chamfers (you know, the kind that take forever to hand type) and the conversational software just blew it out of the water. My hand coded version had a dumb extra rap around a hole I forgot to account for, wasted like 10 seconds a cycle. I still keep my G-code skills sharp for super simple stuff, but for one-offs with crazy geometry, conversational wins every time in my book.

seth44217d ago

Respectfully gotta disagree lol. Hand coding forces you to think through every move and catch potential crashes before they happen, conversational lets you get sloppy and just trust the software's defaults.