good evening gents

HI all, obviously i'm new to the board but a keen enthusiast of all things mechanical ands now my new favorite toys are CNC,

i bought a proturn last year that i'm getting along with nicely now, after a rocky and tool bending start

BUT, i do have a problem, i have very recently bought a bridgeprt with heidenhain tnc 145 controller,
unfortunatly it does not appear to have the rotation feature, or even the pcd feature of which i really do need, the rotation feature shows a seperate R button should be on the pendant ,but mine has no such button,

i have used an on line pcd coordinate finder so i can input the coordinates for each hole using the X0 Y0 as a datum,[the centre] ,

so my questino is ,is there any easier ways go either imput the data,

to elaborate ,i am trying to mill some billet wheel centres that are eight spokes, which taper thinner towards the outer edge, it appers to me that is is all but impossible to plot the coordinates of all the points manually,

is there a free/cheap conversion software that i can use to drew up the designs that will convert the drawing to datums for imputting into the machine manually,

or failing that are there any up grades for the controller or machine that wont break the bank and that are PC based,

Thank's in advance ,

carl

Welcome Carl... can't help you on this, outside my experience these commercial controllers :) but I'm sure one of our experts (JohnS?) will be along shortly!

Carl,
Not conversant with a 145 controller but I do have a manual for it, for others reading this Heidenhain uses it's own form of code and not G code.

A guy near me has a Bridgeport VMC with a 155 control which he programs at the machine for simple jobs, if he gets a complex shape, usually curved flanges, he brings a part or drawing and I program it to do one pass with a 20mm cutter 10mm deep from this he can work out subsequent passes to do the job.

I can do the same for you on your billet wheel if you need, best to do an air cut as I don't speak Heidenhain and have no way of checking the program.