Having a go with F360....

[Davek0974]

It won't fit in my vise though :)

[Davek0974]

Ok, work holding issues aside, say i have machined the inside features etc and want to create the outer contour...



F360 knows the exact size of the raw stock but I'm buggered if i can figure out how to create a path to machine the junk away??

Do you need to draw a box/path around the stock - if so whats the point of putting the stock size in?

You cant select the stock in a process so i cant see its point?

[Davek0974]

F360 is doing my head in ;)

I have my front face set up with my chosen work coordinates system (WCS) as front left corner, Z is of course up/down.

Now, i presumed that if i wanted to machine a feature on the bottom or underside face of that part i could rotate it round, do a new setup and set my WCS as top left corner with Z again now being upwards???

I have spent an hour messing and given up for now - it will not let me position the WCS how i want it and persists in putting either the x or y axis in the wrong direction, i post processed a trial and it does not work as it is off the table in Mach3.

Any ideas how to machine stuff on the underside of a part???

[Davek0974]

It seems it is correct and the error is my brain and Mach3's tool path display.

So far all my work has been done in Q1 which is pretty normal and has home at bottom left corner, the work on the reverse side is in Q4 with home at top left - this seems to make the tool path display hang it off the bottom of the screen which made me think it was wrong.

I sketched out the four quadrants and pencilled in the first few G-code lines and they do indeed fall where they should :)

I will have a play on the machine tonight and do a dummy run.

[Davek0974]

To fix the display issue, you have to turn off "Table Display" in Mach3 :)

Next -

I have code for a part that needs to be run as batches - same code with a break to reload the stock.

How do you stop the pointless tool-change but still maintain the tool length offset??

Code starts like this...
(1)
(T1 D=12. CR=6. - ZMIN=-10. - BALL END MILL)
N10 G90 G94 G91.1 G40 G49 G17
N15 G21
N20 G28 G91 Z0.
N25 G90


(2D CONTOUR2)
N30 M5
N35 M9
N40 T1 M6
N45 S650 M3
N50 G55
N55 M7
N65 G0 X-2.546 Y13.069
N70 G43 Z10. H1
N75 Z2.
N80 G1 Z1. F180.
N85 Z-8.8 F135.
N90 X-2.54 Y13.063 Z-8.934
...