Hey guys, I'm having a problem with drilling operations. The drill will go to the proper x,y locations but it wont plunge, it just stays in the clearance plane and goes from location to location. I have included the g-code its a simple small bracket that has four holes set to drill .1" deep the material is .09" thick.

The code is generated from visual mill 6.0 and my machine is a Sherline 5400 inch. It will mill without any problems, for some reason the drill operations don’t want to plunge.


N1 G00 G49 G40.1 G17 G80 G50 G90
N2 G20
N3 (Standard Drill )
N4 M6 T2
N5 M03 S1500
N6 G00 G43 H1 Z1
N7 G01 X0.3954 Y0.5986 Z0.1000 F3000.0
N8 G00
N9 G81 X0.3954 Y0.5986 Z-0.19 R0.01 L0.0
N10G80
N11 G00 Z0.1000
N12 G81 X0.7234 Y0.9266 Z-0.19 R0.01 L0.0
N13G80
N14 G00 Z0.1000
N15 G81 X0.7234 Y0.2706 Z-0.19 R0.01 L0.0
N16G80
N17 G00 Z0.1000
N18 G81 X1.0514 Y0.5986 Z-0.19 R0.01 L0.0
N19G80
N20 G00 Z0.1000
N21 M5 M9
N22 M30

Thanks for any help at all.

Get rid of the L0.0
The manual said L=0 is not allowed.

Try it like this:

N1 G00 G49 G40.1 G17 G80 G50 G90
N2 G20
N3 (Standard Drill )
N4 M6 T2
N5 M03 S1500
N6 G00 G43 H1 Z1
N7 G01 X0.3954 Y0.5986 Z0.1000 F3000.0
N8 G00
N9 G81 X0.3954 Y0.5986 Z-0.19 R0.01
N10G80
N11 G00 Z0.1000
N12 G81 X0.7234 Y0.9266 Z-0.19 R0.01
N13G80
N14 G00 Z0.1000
N15 G81 X0.7234 Y0.2706 Z-0.19 R0.01
N16G80
N17 G00 Z0.1000
N18 G81 X1.0514 Y0.5986 Z-0.19 R0.01
N19G80
N20 G00 Z0.1000
N21 M5 M9
N22 M30

BINGO! that did the trick. My drill now drills

Thanks for your help! this made my day! Been fighting this issue all morning.

Ok I have a new question regarding drill operations. If I need to drill a deep hole, having the drill cycle to break the chip would be useful. What format does Mach3 Recognize so that it will retract a little to break chips? I want to be able to edit the visual mill post processor (Mach3-Sherline) so that the "break chip" option will post the proper G-code that Mach3 will recognize.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

will visual mill send out a "peck" operation? 

G73 Peck drilling in increments to break chips

G81 Straight drilling

G83 Deep Hole Peck drilling, Drill retracts out of the hole each peck to clear chips

IT is ALL in the manual (;-) , TP

will visual mill send out a "peck" operation? 

Yes visual mill will create peck operations but the format is a  little different. I will need to modify the post processor to output the correct G-code.

Here is a photo of a bracket I designed using ViaCad2d/3d , posted using Visual Mill 6.0, and then cut on a sherline 5400 milling machine with the CNC upgrade. The holes were my problem at first until I removed L command.

I thought I would share what I was working on:

Looks Good from here

(;-) TP

There are peck drilling macro's in the Tool Box, here is the link.

http://www.machsupport.com/forum/index.php/topic,15205.msg101682.html#msg101682

RICH