# Editing post processors?



## Jake2465 (Jul 14, 2018)

I normally use the available post processors from Fusion 360 for my mill. I have tried looking up resources for making / editing post processors, but I have not been successful. Are post processors purely proprietary, or are there general formats and resources that can be obtained so I can figure out how they work?


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## Boswell (Jul 14, 2018)

Probably each CAM system has it's own format for post processors. I am not familiar with the format used for Fusion 360. I think many CAM systems have user-editable Post Processors. for BobCad it is a text file that I can go into and make changes. The format and syntax of the data in the file may or may not be well documented and I am not aware of any standards for post processor formats. I just looked at a Fusion 360 post processor for Mach3. You can open it with Notepad. If you only want to make a minor changes to something, you might be able to figure it out without any documentation. Major changes might be harder. The authors of CAM systems generally want their systems to work on as many hardware platforms as possible I would expect that there is some documentation on how to modify for new systems. F360 is also very popular so there might be a user base that is reverse engineering some documentation somewhere


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## JimDawson (Jul 14, 2018)

The post processors for Fusion are written in Javascript, and are specific to Fusion.  They are editable, you can edit them in notepad or better Notepad ++, https://notepad-plus-plus.org/


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## Jake2465 (Jul 15, 2018)

Right, it's more of learning how they actually work so I can know how to edit them. I have done some basic editing in the Fanuc post processor that came with Fusion 360 so drill ops could be performed and eliminate some of the automatic functionality that I did not need. But, say I would like simultaneous 4th axis capability or even 5 axis capability on a post. I don't think Fusion even has any 5 axis posts available in its library.


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## JimDawson (Jul 16, 2018)

4 & 5 axis?  You just went way beyond what I know how to do.


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## Jake2465 (Jul 16, 2018)

I have no clue either, . 

5 axis would be a bit much for most applications and I could only imagine quite complex. Not to mention that I believe Fusion is still trying to get 4th axis to do simultaneous machining. I hope that they can get that ironed out because it seems like they started working on it back in 2016 and hit a wall. I believe Fusion will still not allow true 3D adaptive clearing on a 4th axis. One has to chop up the machine cycles by indexing the axis and starting another adaptive cycle. Like I sketched up a crankshaft for a three cylinder engine and I ended up having to make fusion do 17 different adaptive cycles to rough it out. All 17 were with the exact same tool...


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## JimDawson (Jul 16, 2018)

I need to edit one of the lathe post processors, my software doesn't handle chip break drilling as well as I would like so I need to turn off the canned cycle to generate that code, then turn on the canned cycle for rigid tapping.  Then have to merge the two files.  Or I could just fix the chip break drill cycle in my software.

I'll get to that when I get time.


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