Has there ever been any consideration to the idea of implementing cutter comp in Ground control? I used several older CNCs in plasma cutting that would read the program in and preprocess it for the kerf before running the program. Would take a short time, depending on program size, and the program would have to be recalculated in tGround Control if you changed the kerf or cutter comp value. This would mean that the code would be easier to write, as the numbers could come straight from a drawing, and Ground Control handles the offset calulations. Ground Control would then send the corrected info to the Maslow controller and the entire program would not have to be sent back through the CAM program to change kerf.
Virtually all modern CAM programs handle offsetting the cutter to cut on either side of directly on a line, a problem best solved during gcode generation rather than in real-time firmware. It’s no longer necessary to add this fairly tricky option to controller firmware.
Cutter compensation requires telling the CAM software which side of the line you want to cut on anyway, so why not do the cutter compensation in our far more powerful today personal computers than in time and space limited firmware?
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Fusion 360 definitely has this. And be careful, as I recall it is possible to change it with a shortcut that I accidentally did one time while reviewing a simulation. It was only after I added back the full material and carefully inspected the cuts that I realized what was going on and why some of the cuts were under sized!
-Jeff