To MCU or not to MCU

GreggT · Post by **GreggT** » Thu May 06, 2004 9:37 am

Gents;

Is everybody using the MCU? I haven't tried it until today and am wondering if it is worth learning or just fluff ware? What is the benefit of using this tool inbetween VM and your controller? Is it worth the effort to learn? If so is it worth then upgrading to the full version? Thoughts and opinions greatly apriciated. Thanks

GreggT

Happy VM5 User · Post by **Happy VM5 User** » Thu May 06, 2004 2:33 pm

Hello GreggT,

I was using MCU 30 days period. Then it went down to light version, which only works for posted VM files. This is not necessary for VM, as VM has good visual simulation. But just today I asked my dealer to sell me fullversion, because it uses solidview for materialremoval.
Because some of my workers make programs on the millmachine, which have no simulation, they have chance to see on PCscreen, what they programmed. Even VM posted toolpathes are easily to examinate. This is my reason to use MCU.

Regards
Robert

GreggT · Post by **GreggT** » Thu May 06, 2004 3:50 pm

Thanks Robert, I'm trying to decide if I want to invest any energy in learning it. looks like a good tool, but if VM does everything I need it too I can't justify the time.

GreggT

DareBee · Post by **DareBee** » Fri May 07, 2004 5:38 am

I dont know anything about MCU (I looked at for a couple of hours but failed to see how it would help me at all).
In regards to Roberts post, would you not be able to use the reverse post command in VM to do sims from machine created programs.
This is as more a question than a statement as I have seen reverse post in the menu but never used it or read about its functionality.

Post by **MecSoft Support** » Fri May 07, 2004 8:07 am

The reason MCU is included is because in very rare cases we have customers worrying about the posted G-code not being correct. VisualMill verifies our internal toolpath to be correct but does not do this on the posted file. This is where MCU comes in. Since MCU verifies the posted G-code this is another safety check in cases when you absolutely want to test the post-processor output. A example of this case would be when you are customizing a post-processor.