When I got my machine, I did not know how to operate it. It was just like dark magic for me. I soon figured out how to move the axis and run the spindle. On the second day I had my machine I was able to run whole programs that I typed into the very limited input device.
The emco f1 cnc machine is already over 30 years old, so the cnc controller is adequate to that time. The only input/ output device are a small screen, which can display one parameter, and a numpad plus some buttons for M codes and other functions.
Because if the limitation in the input and output devices of the emco f1 cnc controller, it is hard to get an overview of the program you write. That is why I soon started to write down the program beforehand on a sheet of paper. I would print out the CNC Programmers manual by Emco and always have it nearby with the page to the g code references opened. This was a huge boost to my productivity using the Emco F1 cnc.
This setup would work great for some time, until I encountered another issue. The next summer after buying the machine in late fall a friend of mine came to visit me for a week and we would play around with the emco, trying to produce different parts on it. That’s the point where we encountered another issue. Sometime one would not be able to read the others handwriting and this would lead to confusion. Or even worse, the numbers would look like different numbers, which consequently led to crashing the machine. (Don’t worry, those crashed weren’t fatal for the machine, but they surely scared us as hell.)
The first thing that obviously came into our mind is writing the programs on the computer. But what tool would we use was now the question. I figured that using Excel Spreadsheets with columns as the parameters and lines as code blocks would be the way to go.
From that point on we were only using Excel Spreadsheets to code for the original emco f1 cnc controller and it was great. We were speeding through a lot of parts. My friend was operating the machine and me at the desk, creating the programs in Excel. It was a great time. We were learning very fast, using subroutines all the time for more complex geometry.
This whole summer was a great experience for us two. So we agreed upon repeating it next summer. Little we have known at that point, but next summer would be an entirely different story.
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