Centroid Community CNC Support Forum

Just a couple features that would help with daily milling use that I've found myself doing.

Intercon: the ability for the Frame cycle to leave tabs would be really helpful. The alternative I'm using is a bunch of lines and a depth repeat, and leaving a tab on the contour. Not the most user-friendly experience, and it's not great to try to leave more than one tab as with depth repeat I have it finishing up one section, then the second section when I'd rather it do both sections at once and move the quill up in Z to clear the tab.

Power feed: I use this screen a lot, but I don't always want to insert an exact distance to move. What I imagine instead would be similar to enabling/disabling a power feed on a manual mill. So imagine a fifth function here, F5 - Jog Rate Override. You insert a feed rate, and it overrides the settings on the jog buttons to use these settings. Thus, it'll jog at the given rate as long as you hold down the feed (or maybe the inc/cont button could be used to turn it on/off). Once you exit the screen, the regularly configured jog settings return.

I spent 2 weeks on intercon and realized it is too limited to spend any more time on. There are other CAM programs that flat leave it in the dust.

Your desire for controlled jogs can be worked out in the PLC program to do what you are asking. The PLC is a very cool way to customize your machine to do many simple processes like that, but it does take some studying to figure out basic C++ programing codes. Or, a simpler way is to just use the speed control to lower the rate as a percentage.

Intercon was never really meant for complex parts. I use it for quick one off stuff. Faster than CAD/CAM for simple stuff....
It is good for those new to CNC and with little CAD/CAM experience wanting to make some simple parts.
Just my .02
Marty

I am a visual person. To this day I cannot tell what intercon is going to do without making dry practice runs. The graph mode is 1980's comp sci at best. I also get bogged down because the parameter inputs are usually darked out, but the program wants them. I have to go to an unwanted mode to insert a parameter, then cancel and re-select the desired mode to carry the parameter over. Calling it "interactive" is very generous. I can do most of what it can do faster manually. The only thing it does better than manual are the curves, but they are not that easy to setup.

For simple operations I can build a simple part in Fusion and CAM it in HSM within a minute. It takes me longer to navigate the screens in intercon to figure out which mode will work. Then I can see exactly what it plans to do from any angle and adjust absolutely everything about the cut. I have run 30,000 line programs that were built in less than an hour.

From my perspective, starting absolutely cold on both platforms, intercon is an obsolete software that I feel I wasted a month of my time learning. Fusion with HSM is nearly unlimited, so every minute spent carries over to all modern CAM software.

Then there is the support. Non existent for intercon, unless you can find Centroid staff willing to forgoe their hourly charge. Try a search for intercon support on google, youtube, anywhere and see how little comes up. then try Fusion and HSM. OMG is Fusion supported internationally.

To each their own I guess. I've been using Centroid controls for a little over 9 years now and I use Intercon for about 50% of my jobs on the mill and about 90% of the work on my lathe. Most of my work is prototype medical devices in 17-4PH stainless in either H900 or annealed condition (35-40Rc and 150-190ksi). I rarely make more than two parts of the same design.

Contrary to CJD's observation, I find Intercon very simple to use. For each operation, the right side of the screen shows a list of questions while the left shows an annotated image with the parts of the operation labeled. Start at the top of the questions on the right and work your way down. Selecting a question highlights the particular part in the image to the left.

If particular parameter inputs are grayed out, it's because they are not needed for the particular sub-cycle chosen, or they are global parameters controlled by the Intercon setup menu in which case they are noted as such on the left image. For instance the drill cycle has in addition to the standard drill, both deep hole and peck variants along with the additional parameters to control them. Tap does both straight tapping and peck using either rigid tapping, tapping heads, or floating tap holders. Each of those sub-types have additional parameters not used by the others.

I agree that there is almost no web based mentions of Intercon and that is probably due to it's simplicity. The manual documentation covers the basics describing each cycle type and it's inputs and there are two tutorials that walk you through creation of a part. Could that be improved? Most definitely, but it's enough to get most people started.

If my mill features are circles, rectangles, and holes, I'll probably program that in Intercon. If a profile has more than a couple of arcs, then I'll jump to SolidCAM. If I have a bore in a part that is tight toleranced, I'll often rough it out along with the other part features with CAM, but then come back and finish it with an Intercon circular pocket or boring cycle so I can sneak up on the final feature size.

For work on the lathe, Intercon handles most of my needs. My lathe is a converted Hardinge HLV with a toolpost so I tend to write one program for each tool and set my tools up for each job. Simple turning, facing, and boring ask for the starting snd ending diameters, z locations for each, what tool, how big are the roughing and finishing cuts and at what speeds and feeds. One "question" on the right hand side screen for each. Boom. Done.

I end up using the profile cycle alot mainly because it lets me easily program fillets and chamfer transitions between features without having to know arc start and end points. However, I also manually create these in Intercon quite often if I'm dealing with small features relative to my feedrates just so I can drop the feedrate down.

As far as support, there are quite a few people who use Intercon here on the forums who are happy to answer questions, but for the most part it's easy and fast enough to experiment with the features and answer most of your own questions. As always, your mileage may vary.

Intercon was never really meant for complex parts. I use it for quick one off stuff. Faster than CAD/CAM for simple stuff....
It is good for those new to CNC and with little CAD/CAM experience wanting to make some simple parts.
Just my .02
Marty

I'd have to agree with Marty on this as I use Bob-Cad Cam, Fusion and Intercon. All have their purpose! I don't think intercon was intended to be a replacement for Cad/Cam programs.

For one off parts, Intercon is my goto choice. I just finished a pair of adaptors last night with an external thread, a bore and an internal thread. It would have taken me longer to draw them in Fusion 360 and make the tool paths than it did to just run them a step at a time in Intercon.

Life is full of choices, this one is just an individual's preference.

Dave C.

Oh...forgot the biggy in one word..."thread milling", LOL. It is built into Fusion, and a hugely expensive upgrade for intercon. After thread milling I will never spin another tap unless I just can't get the work on my table.

I have to say I am floored. The jobs you guys are doing would be soooo much faster with Fusion. Tell me honestly...you're really using intercon because you don't have Fusion (or a better program like Inventor) on your system? That is honestly the only reason I would use Intercon. Every time I think..."let me try intercon again for this simple face job" or something similar, I am sold again on Fusion. I have yet to find anything it can do faster or better.

Then, they charged me for a little thumb drive to build a big job on intercon! Fusion is a practically unlimited modern platform, and for free. Like I said, I am floored that you guys are supporting intercon over Fusion.

CJD wrote: ↑Sun Oct 11, 2020 11:01 am Oh...forgot the biggy in one word..."thread milling", LOL. It is built into Fusion, and a hugely expensive upgrade for intercon. After thread milling I will never spin another tap unless I just can't get the work on my table.

I have to say I am floored. The jobs you guys are doing would be soooo much faster with Fusion. Tell me honestly...you're really using intercon because you don't have Fusion (or a better program like Inventor) on your system? That is honestly the only reason I would use Intercon. Every time I think..."let me try intercon again for this simple face job" or something similar, I am sold again on Fusion. I have yet to find anything it can do faster or better.

Then, they charged me for a little thumb drive to build a big job on intercon! Fusion is a practically unlimited modern platform, and for free. Like I said, I am floored that you guys are supporting intercon over Fusion.

Threadmilling is in Intercon: https://www.centroidcnc.com/conversational.html
Intercon is included in CNC12
You bought the Offline version so you could use it at your desk. It is not a thumb drive, its a security key to enable Intercon.

Do what suits you best! Not trying to twist your arm.