EMC2 Aspire Post Processor Nested Comment errors

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Boort
Vectric Apprentice
Posts: 68
Joined: Tue Dec 09, 2008 9:03 am
Location: Colorado, USA

EMC2 Aspire Post Processor Nested Comment errors

Post by Boort »

Hello all,

I'm running Aspire v2.5 and recently gained access to a shopbot router that has been updated to be driven by an EMC2 controller. I have just run a test with an edited version of the stock post processor. In my edits I have added a comment to tell me which tool I need to load for each toolpath. Unfortunately the names of some of my bits appear to cause problems for EMC2. A bunch of my tool names include parenthesis "()" to quickly tell me the diameter of the bit. For example my 0.250 inch spiral up-cut router bit is defined with the name "End Mill (0.25 inch)". This causes a post processor with the following entries:

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      begin HEADER
      "( Tools used in this file:                      )"
      "(   [TOOLS_USED]      )"
to output a lines like this:

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      ( Tools used in this file:                      )
      (   1 = End Mill (0.25 inch)      )
When I open this gcode file in EMC it posts an error and will not process the job until I edit the file and remove the nested comment (sed is great for doing this quickly, but I would rather not have to edit each of my gcode files if I don't have to.) I looked up the EMC2 source code and they state:

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      01454 Comments are left unchanged in place. Comments are anything
      01455 enclosed in parentheses. Nested comments, indicated by a left
      01456 parenthesis inside a comment, are illegal.
I have read over the post processor doc from:
http://www.vectric.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=6213
but not yet located any way to have Aspire either remove or specify a replacement for these parens. Is there a way to update the post processor to do this replacement on the fly (IE: a list of illegal chars that can be defined in the post) or will I need to rename all of my tool bits to use another char? (If so is there a fast way to do this?)

Regards,
BoorT
Rockcliff Model A (built fall 2008)
- Baltic Birch / Probotix 3axis /Bosch Colt
- Mach3 / Aspire v2

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Mark
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Joined: Sat Aug 18, 2007 2:55 pm
Model of CNC Machine: CNC Shark, ShopBot, Roland PNC3000
Location: Alcester U.K.
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Re: EMC2 Aspire Post Processor Nested Comment errors

Post by Mark »

Hello BoorT,

The substitute command can be used to do just this.

A command of SUBSTITUTE = "({)}" would replace any parentheses
in the output with curly braces (use any character that is acceptable to EMC2).

This is covered in more detail on page 7 of the post processor guide.

I hope that this helps.

Mark.

Boort
Vectric Apprentice
Posts: 68
Joined: Tue Dec 09, 2008 9:03 am
Location: Colorado, USA

Re: EMC2 Aspire Post Processor Nested Comment errors

Post by Boort »

Mark,

Thank you for the help! I knew it had to be there somewhere don't know how I missed it.

Regards,
BoorT
Rockcliff Model A (built fall 2008)
- Baltic Birch / Probotix 3axis /Bosch Colt
- Mach3 / Aspire v2

friesen
Posts: 10
Joined: Sat Jan 21, 2012 12:47 am
Model of CNC Machine: Home built from FireballV90

Re: EMC2 Aspire Post Processor Nested Comment errors

Post by friesen »

substitute ,etc.. doesn't seem to work, at least with cut2d 1.1. Do these use a different core?

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Adrian
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Posts: 14544
Joined: Thu Nov 23, 2006 2:19 pm
Model of CNC Machine: ShopBot PRS Alpha 96x48
Location: Surrey, UK

Re: EMC2 Aspire Post Processor Nested Comment errors

Post by Adrian »

These Post Processor commands aren't supported by Cut2D. You would need to rename the tools to get round the issue in that program.

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SUBSTITUTE  
TAPE_SPLITTING 
RAPID_PLUNGE_TO_STARTZ 
ROTARY_WRAP_Y 
ROTARY_WRAP_X 
begin FIRST_PLUNGE_MOVE   [Section] 
 
Variables not supported. 
[WRAP_DIA] [X_ORIGIN_POS] [Y_ORIGIN_POS] [Z_ORIGIN] [XY_ORIGIN] [TOOLS_USED] 
[TOOLPATH_NOTES] [FILE_NOTES] [TIME] [DATE] [TOOLPATHS_OUTPUT] 

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