Windows 11 
Office 365
Greetings,
I have been using Access for years to "run" my historic window mfg. business - clear back when tech-support was free! I wore them out :-) However, I was never formally trained and never got very deep into actual code, so while I tried to implement conventions and was aware of normalization it's not the most pretty or professional DB out there. But, it has proven functional and I use it practically every day.
As you would imagine, it is structured something like this tblClient>tblProject>tlWindow, with several other support tables thrown in the mix.
Right or wrong, every field and expression I need to generate window part cut list reports is in qryWinCalcs.
I have also created several parametric spreadsheet programs in Excel to generate G-code for my CNC machines. On one sheet (winData) I have cells in which I input general specifications about a window, another sheet (winCalcs) uses that as a source to do the required calculations and yet another sheet (winProg) uses winCalcs as a source and is designed, formatted and structured be acceptable to be copied and pasted into a text editor to be used for G-code. I plug that right into my machines and the machine does my bidding. It works perfectly. So, once setup, I or one of my shop techs can go to the winData sheet and merely input the height, width, winID and part type (four fields) data and the proper G-code pops out the other end.
Here's the rub….All the data that we input into the spreadsheets comes directly from Access reports. So, we have to print Access reports then manually input the data into Excel. We must do this for every unique window size in a project and there may be several sizes involved. For example, a current project has 82 windows and 27 of them are a unique size. Furthermore, there are at least three or more machining operations (CNC programs) for every window. This means in the example above, I or someone else must accurately input at least 81records and 324 pieces of data into the spreadsheets – lot’s of room for error.
A very simplistic chunk of G-code looks like this. The following will mill a straight line in a piece of wood 900 mm long….
G54 (lookup start points (X0 table left most, Y0 bottom most Z0 top most))
M6T1 (change to tool 1)
G43H 1 (lookup tool 1 height and set the Z height appropriately)
M3S 24000 (Start the spindle and run it at 24000 rpm)
G0Z 25.4 (Move spindle at max speed to 1” above the work)
G0X100.00Y100.00 (Move at max speed to 100mm from the left and 100 from the bottom)
G1Z – 10.00 F 4000 (Move at 4000mm/min to 10mm below the work surface)
G1Y1000.00 (Move at 4000mm/min 1000mm up the work (cutting)
G0Z 25.4 (Raise the spindle at max speed to 1” above the work)
M5 (Turn off the spindle)
M30 (End the program)
All of my machines will read *.txt files
So, a) does this seem feasible, b) has anyone experience in doing this, c) any suggestions or advice in implementing a program like this d) does anyone wan to work with me on a project like this?
Cheers!
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Originally Posted by HeirloomWindows
