Topics

1

LazyTurn / School me on tip radius.

« on: January 12, 2011, 07:38:11 PM »

I'm making some parts now with LT. I love free CAM!!! However, I'm having a little problem with tip radius and how to use it. My parts are coming out to big. The radius of the parts are always the correct diameter of the part plus the tip radius.

Perhaps I'm zeroing the tool incorrectly. I'm zeroing the tool so that the tip of the tool touches the stock. I measure the stock and put the radius of the stock as the position that the tool is on the X axis.

I'm new to CNC turning so if I'm missing something obvious, please be gentle.

-Jim

2

LazyTurn / Inscribed circle, what am I missing?

« on: December 02, 2010, 07:58:01 AM »

From the definition in the manual, I expect the tool definition "Inscribed Circle" to be the radius of a circle that will completely envelop the tool. Or it stupid person terms for me, how big of a snow angle would the tool make if spun in a circle.

So using that definition, I created a tool in LazyTurn that is a 55 degree diamond tool that is 3/8" long on its longest axis. So I set the inscribed circle to 0.1875. Attached is a screen shot of the result. LazyTurn creates a diamond that is 3/8" on its short axis and about 0.8" on its long axis. There is no way that a circle of radius 0.1875 could inscribe the tool that LazyTurn created.

What am I doing wrong?

-Jim

3

Feature Requests / iPad app for Mach 3

« on: July 04, 2010, 11:42:05 AM »

It sure would be cool if Mach could be ported to iOS. My touch screen iPad in combination with the smoothstepper would be an amazing machine control device. It has the power and if you rely on the caching capabilities of the smoothstepper you don't need a real time OS.

The iPad has USB support, but a WiFi or Bluetooth smooth stepper would also be pretty.sweet.  But that's a request for another forum.
-Jim