Coordinate system rotation

[dandonegan]

I'm new to the forum and hope I'm posting this in the correct place.

I have recently purchased a new bed mill at work. It has a centroid M400 controlwhich has a function called coordinate rotation.  This is centroid's description of the function.

"This option is made specifically for the machinist who is constantly breaking down and setting up new fixtures and vises. By simply touching off two points along the edge of your fixture, the control will automatically rotate the machine coordinate system to match your fixture/part saving you time and money. With CSR your vise,fixture or part does not have to be lined up with the machine, CSR eliminates aligning the vise with an indicator. CSR is very accurate. Job set in minutes. Both automatic (with the CENTROID DP-4 Probe) and manual touch off set up can be used." http://www.centroidcnc.com/cncvideo/videocsr.html

I have been amazed by this additional capability.  No longer are you spending aligning parts and fixtures with the tool.  You basically just bolted it down, touch off of it twice with the probe or edge finder in and run your program.  It has a very nice screen very similar to the touch off screen in Mach  that guides you through this procedure.  Is there some really smart person out there that would like to make this a function? It's one of those things that once you start using it you cant imagine how you did not have it before.

Dan

[Brian Barker]

Yup have that in Mach3 

[fer_mayrl]

Brian,
Could you elaborate on this?
Regards
Fernando

[Brian Barker]

You can set the rotation of the part on the table with G68 R20.0 for example. This would turn the file about 0 , 0 20.0 Deg. Now to calc the angle that the part is out... I wrote a wizard to do that for me over a year ago I don't have the code at this time but I think there is some of it on the yahoo group.

If there people that think this is something that they would like to have I can look into getting this working

Brian

PS you don't need a probe you can do it with an edge finder

[dandonegan]

Thanks for the information Brian,

G68 is definitely in the obscure end of g code.  Interestingly if you go to the Mach 3 G  code cheat sheet it is not even listed there.

while I was experimenting entering this in the MDI screen I noticed that right above the MDI data entry box you can enter in the work rotation angle directly.  By using this web site http://www.saltire.com/applets/triangles/tri2sia.htm I can easily calculate the angles using the DRO information.

Thanks again Brian from Dan the math challenged machinist.

[CNC-Steuerung]

Hi,

the G68/G69 Code in Mach3 works absolute correct and fine.
In our german Screenset (for professional Users, so not free downloadable..) Ive implemented such a function as seen:

In this screen you touch your work piece 4 times, slect a preferred edge (if this part has no included exact rect angle),
and the script rotate the coordinate system.

Greetings from Germany,

Wolfram

www.cnc-steuerung.com

[vmax549]

Hi Brian, I took your example of the CR( several months back) and made a page of it. I use a touch probe for setup. It is not pretty but it works very well. It would make a great addition to mach to have a professional CR page to add into Mach's screen set. Or just a wizard. It is a great time saver to be able to do CR on setups. It does need to be able to do X or Y axis alignment, and center of two holes for rotation. (;-)

[Brian Barker]

Good work!