3 ms·
Using gcode on a lathe or other subtractive machine is ORDERS of magnitude more productive because orders of magnitude less code is required because orders of m
by jakobson14 3y ago
Using gcode on a lathe or other subtractive machine is ORDERS of magnitude more productive because orders of magnitude less code is required because orders of magnitude fewer operations are required.
With a subtractive process you typically only need to put a few holes into specific locations using a cutting tool roughly the same size as the hole. Jog over, plunge, jog over to the next site, plunge. Maybe you need to mill out a few pockets or an exterior shape, in which case you switch to an endmill that's good for mass material removal and perform 2-3 passes around the outline's polygon.
And then there are additive processes that 3D printers use. Try to back-of-the-envelope how many passes of the tool head are required to build a 5x5x5cm cube using a hotend that has an orifice of 0.0004 cm and a layer thickness of 0.0002 cm. It's a lot of passes, and because gcode was designed for the subtractive processes where only a few passes are typically required, it contains zero macro commands for doing it in fewer lines of code. If you want to infill with a fancy material-saving pattern, the complexity of the movements required goes exponential and so does the LoC.