Heidenhain Circular Interpolation

Heidenhain Circular Interpolation

On or Offsite CNC Training

Tel: David 07834 858 407

Heidenhain circular interpolation, mm what bullshit, this just means cutting in a circular move.

Very often wrongly called interpolation here is Wikipedia meaning.
Well that’s definitely confused me. But to me interpolation means movement.

Circular interpolation moving in a circular motion, full or part circle.
Linear interpolation moving in a straight line.

Heidenhain circular interpolation, there are four ways to produce a circular move on a Heidenhain control. You will love the flexibility of this control once you take the time to get to know it.

CNC Airfryer

Heidenhain is the Airfryer of CNC controls, it does the lot and in many different ways. Now the healthy option is the one that suits your drawing and require the least amount of Maths.

Here are some Airfryer recipes to try at home.

Come on David Where are The Fuckin Circles????

1. You can use the same way as a Fanuc using  which is end point and radius.
2. Using tangent and end point.
3. Using circle centre and end point.
4. Intersecting corners then program the function.

This video explains it all. You’ll have four useful tools in your programming toolbox.

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The Heidenhain control offers multiple choices when it comes to circular moves try to use the information straight from your drawing.

Heidenhain Sections in a Program

On or Offsite CNC Training

Tel: David 07834 858 407

Heidenhain Sections, I don’t get to work on Heidenhain controls anywhere near as much as I would like to.

A recent training program we undertook with a packaging company meant I got loads of time to have fun with this control whilst working with some fantastic people oh, and I got paid too.

Ever since I first worked on Heidenhain controls in the early 80s I have found them very intuitive. As with all the CNC controls (and I am gonna have a moan) they tend to get over complicated.

Heidenhain Full Circle

Heidenhain Full Circle Q Def

Full Circle Heidenhain (Macro Program)

Macro to program a Full Circle Heidenhain

Heidenhain has its own form of parametric programming it uses Q values sometimes called Q DEF.

Er what you on about now David? You ask.

Ok sorry to shroud you in a cocoon of total bullshit.

It’s like Macro on a Fanuc Control. What you do is you program a circle and instead of putting numbers for the X values n stuff you put a Q number like Q1 or Q10

Then you tell it what the Q values are. So instead of X-20. you could have X+Q10

If you then went on to define Q10 as -20 then X would be X-20.

All will be revealed.

Take a look at this code.

Full Circle Heidenhain

This code will mill a full circle and because it’s in incremental (note the I in front of the X value) you can dump one anywhere. By that I mean you can mill one of these circles anywhere not take a shit anywhere.

Now watch it in action.

This is great but it is not easy to control. If we wanted a different diameter there are quite a few figures to change. If you are a bit of a prick like me then you’d probably get it wrong and scrap the part.

Q DEF To The Rescue Full Circle Heidenhain

Using Q def is really easy. You could start by using it to change the feedrate. Look at the code now.

Line 7 and line 17 define Q1 as two different values.

So when each one calls LBL 1 the feedrate in line 25 will change to whatever value is in Q1.

Clever eh…..

But that’s not all.

You can have loads of Q values whopeeee.

Stick Around For The Exciting Stuff

Watch this before you ditch this post and go on Facebook and see what your mate Pete had for his breakfast. Or “oh look at this the dog just crapped on the new sofa”

So, you’re with me….

Lets do the same but this time replace the X value. (Oh and some other shit too like the Z Depth)

This macro uses Q Values to externally control the radius, feedrate and depth of a circle.

Because the program is in incremental  you can place it anywhere you want.

I have purposely kept it really simple for demonstration purposes (not because it’s all I know).

So you replace the X values or whatever you want to control with Q Numbers.

You then give a value to these Q numbers

And that’s it. Hopefully the video says it all.

If you want to do this on a Sinumeric Siemens 840D read this

See how it’s done on a Fanuc control.

Thanks

If you have been affected by any of the issues in this post or need CNC Counselling then contact me.

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