Re: [CAD_CAM_EDM_DRO] gerber and excellon to gcode?

afogassa wrote:

> Hi everyone!
>
> does anyone knows of a software that converts gerber and excellon
> to gcode? I want to drill and rout TANGO files but desknc and
> deskncwin only reads gcodes.

Gerber and Excellon drill files ARE "gcode", alias for RS-274D. They
are a very specialized variant, however. They both have decimal points
suppressed, and one suppresses leading zeroes, one suppresses
trailing zeroes. A line starting with % defines the format, as to how many
digits are left and right of the implied decimal point. Once the drill file
is read in and the decimal point added at the right location, that file is
just about ready to be used with any CNC program that has canned
drill cycles. Every time an X or Y coordinate is mentioned in a block,
it will go to that location and drill a hole.

The Gerber is a lot more complicated. It desribes how to draw the board
with a light beam. What you want is to cut around the patterns that are
described by the Gerber file. Merely cutting around each flash or draw
in the gerber will isolate all the track segments and pads, which is NOT
what you want. There are programs that will do this, but the free ones
have a number of limitations. This has been discussed before.

Jon