More Progress!!
I added the coolant plumbing and a parting blade.
The parting blade is made from an old wood circular saw with tungsten carbide tips. I got this great idea from Peter on the HSM forum. Thanks Peter. There is an excellent thread at
http://bbs.homeshopmachinist.net/showthread.php?t=39202 regarding shop made tooling. I have had great inspirations from that thread. Peter's idea can be found here :
http://bbs.homeshopmachinist.net/showpost.php?p=516034&postcount=328For Peter's parting blade, I designed and made a special upside down tool holder for the gang tool post. I am very pleased with the parting results. Centre line adjustments for the tip are made with a rocking action around the centre of a 16mm Stainless Steel Rod held in the tool post. All I have to do is adjust the two M8 screws at the rear of the assembly to get the tip on centre.
It took me some time (2 days) to work out how to program the gang tool post. Initially I tried to use Mach3's tool table which worked but the tool table offset calls were causing the tool to go indirectly (not directly as I expected) to the cutting position. The result was that the cross slide would travel to the X+ limit switch on tools that were not the master.
Because I did not understand how the tool table movements were programmed internally, I gave up with the tool table approach. It was not going to work the way I thought it should. It also added more time to the program with its indirect route.
I then manually programmed the spot drill and drill to go to their respective absolute positions. This worked but had the end result of buggering up the Constant Surface Speed (CSS) operation. Large offsets caused the CSS to command the spindle speed to go too slow (makes sense when I now think about it).
Then I tried G54 to G59 fixture offsets but this had the same problem with CSS.
Then the penny dropped after doing some research with Peter Smid's bible. I used temporary offset command G52 X??? Z??? to move the non master tools to their respective cutting positions. This solved the CSS problem and worked so well that I have decided to do all my future programming for the gang tool post this way.
I am currently making drip directing devices for the coolant. The coolant travels along the frame and drips outside the catch area of my coolant return tray. Next will be a mudguard (Some call them wings or fenders) for the chuck. I had to dodge the spray from the chuck a couple of times.
Here is the lathe in action with coolant and parting added:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=55SLUjDg5go