Hi guys, for reference I run 2 Prototrak lathes, one 3 axis bed mill, and a few other 2 axis retrofits. My company is big into Prototrak for my semi-manual repair side of the shop. I was just wondering, with how unique the programming experience is on Prototraks, will I be able to take what ive learned to other machines? Before these I was only manual so this is really the only “CNC” experience I have so far.
Thanks in advance!
I’m not familiar with those controls, but they appear to be primarily conversational programming. If this is the case, the main thing that will translate is you knowing the order of operations and how things should be cut, as well as terminology. It shouldn’t be too bad of a learning curve to learn another machine.
Prototrak is extremely wide spread, it might be harder to find a shop without some form of their machines these days.
As for transferring conversational programming knowledge between different machines tools… Somewhat. You will need familiarity with all the preparatory code like g40,g80,g17…etc . But a lot of machines these days come with a form of conversational programming… FAPT, shopmill/shopTurn, mazatrol, visual quick.
Once you figure out what the machine tools are expecting, then a lot of the code and it’s placement becomes second nature.
