CNC Turning on a standard CNC mill

[Leadhead]

I have seen a couple of cases of people mounting a powered chuck in their X plane. (In one case even a complete mini lathe.) Then turning with either locked quill static tools or rotary cutting tools. I would quite like to try this. If there is any guidance on the subject available. Especially using standard Mach3 programming. Presumably just X & Z. I would be most obliged for assistance.

[Boyan Silyavski]

The best DIY or in other words "pro but on the cheap" implementation i have seen is the now called INTURN (http://theinturn)

You could search the cnczone for the build thread as it started there and see how it progressed. Now i see he has some dedicated electronics , see diagram bellow.
Best would be to contact Steve directly.


http://www.mycncuk.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=15663&stc=1

[Leadhead]

Thanks silyavski (http://www.mycncuk.com/members/10304-silyavski) - I had not envisaged at this time adding a 4th Axis rotary encoder .
Just a rotation device. Which is simple enough. So I guess my inquiry is a software question.

[magicniner]

If you want to use a mill with a lathe spindle mounted in X, using Mill X as Lathe Z and Mill Z as Lathe X then there's nothing special to do apart from fixing a tool to the mill head and configuring your axes in Mach3 and correctly defining your machine in any CAM package you use.

[Leadhead]

magicniner - Yes suddenly dawned on me to just flip the axies. Seems to work OK. Just have to finish the rotary bit.

[Jonathan]

If you only need to machine small parts, then you can do it like I (and many others) did:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4wGDMSiZpyg