Had a chat with my apprentice that made me rethink G-code comments

My apprentice Jamie asked why I never leave notes in my G-code programs. I told him I just remember what each line does. Then he showed me his own files with little comments like 'rough pass at 6000 rpm, don't touch' and I realized he was right. Last Tuesday I had to re-read a 3-year-old program for a part we reran and it took me 45 minutes to figure out my own logic. Anyone else actually take time to document their code or am I just old school about this?

2 comments

2 Comments

kelly.daniel26d ago

My buddy down at the shop does that same thing. He writes novels in his G-code. I'm talking full paragraphs about which endmill to use and why. Makes me feel lazy. I spent an hour last month trying to remember why I set a feed rate at 12 inches per minute on an old program. Turns out the part was warping. If I had just wrote that down somewhere I would've saved myself the headache.

the_drew26d ago

Dude, you're totally right. I spent like three hours once trying to figure out why a program was running so slow on a repeat job. Finally dug through some old notes on a napkin and it said "material had bad stress relief, slow down to 8 IPM." If I had just put that in the G-code itself I would have saved a whole afternoon. It's such a simple thing but it makes all the difference when you come back to something months later.