Messages

141

LazyTurn / Re: LazyTurn

« on: November 27, 2008, 11:58:24 AM »

No problem Art, it'll be a while before I have a CNC lathe ready as well, just getting up to speed with it all.
I do have some profiling to do that I was going to use my mill as a lathe for but other considerations mean that I'm going to use a profile tool in my manual lathe.

steve

142

LazyTurn / Re: LazyTurn

« on: November 27, 2008, 11:36:58 AM »

Well I've had a mess around with a simple part, basicly a ball on the end of a stick.

This is all just in lazyturn, no actual cutting.
I used a button cutter to make one set of code and the roughing was very rough, big steps etc.
I then tried a groove tool (basicly a parting blade) and the roughing was much smoother, same settings as the button cutter, 0.1mm pull out and stock clearance with 0.5mm per pass.
I would have thought it would be the other way round

Anyway it's looking good, certainly lazy so far.

Thanks
Steve

143

General Mach Discussion / Re: g code

« on: November 27, 2008, 11:20:18 AM »

Redraw every time, by the time you've messed with it and then found something not quite right, deleted unwanted lines, relayered etc you could have redrawn the item.

Not quite the same but I'm a sign maker and I get customers coming in with rubbish artwork for their logo's all the time, I used to try scanning it and then vectorising it with different programs, I always ended up spending more time cleaning up the vector file that it takes to draw a new one + the more you practice the faster you get, I knock out quite complicated artwork now in very little time.

When I was a practicing (I'm still no better ) engineer and I was drawing a lot of the time with CAD I could redo a simple parts drawing in a few minutes (we had a lot of old hand drawn std components that needed to be put onto CAD)

Steve

144

LazyTurn / Re: LazyTurn

« on: November 27, 2008, 10:57:54 AM »

Hi

Hitting the N key does the trick, I really am going to have to read all the previous posts to get clued up on all this stuff.

Thanks
Steve

145

LazyTurn / Re: LazyTurn

« on: November 27, 2008, 10:18:07 AM »

Hi Art

Thanks for the reply.
I'm definatly only clicking once.
Just tried again and I clicked the yes button this time and had to repeatedly click it until the progress bar reached the end.

I'll try it on my laptop later as I'm in my office right now.

What does the inscribed circle mean and how do I tell it how wide a grove tool is, or is all this info in previous posts, I tried going through them all but only got to page 8 before having to stop the kids killing each other

Steve

146

LazyTurn / Re: LazyTurn

« on: November 27, 2008, 07:08:56 AM »

Hi Art

I got lazyturn installed using the lazycam 3.00 updater file and then I copied the latest lazyturn .exe file into the folder. I only have lazycam installed on this computer, no mach3

I've created a simple profile and exported as a R12 dxf then opened it in lazyturn no problem, by the way how do you set the zero to the tailstock end?
Here's were the problems start, I opened the tool setup and the black tool holder is making a strange wavy action from left to right, I then got an message saying "open gl error stack overflow". This also happend sometimes when I tried to create a tool path.

When I click the create toolpath button I then get a message saying "mouse click detected do you want to quit the operation, yes/no (buttons)" clicked the no button and the message reappeared, this repeats until the progress bar at the bottom has advanced to the end.
Clicking the yes button gives a message "path creation error no stock contour".

I've also tried it on another computer with the same results.

If you want more info or screen shots I'll sort them for you.

Thanks
Steve

147

LazyTurn / Re: LazyTurn

« on: November 26, 2008, 04:01:38 PM »

Thanks for the quick reply Art, I'll get it downloaded and try again tomorrow.

Is there a way to run lazyturn separately on another computer, my cad is on my laptop in my nice warm house and my cnc computer is in my COLD workshop

Thanks
Steve

148

LazyTurn / Re: LazyTurn

« on: November 26, 2008, 03:08:09 PM »

Hi

I'm trying to have a go with lazyturn but it doesn't run, it tells me that sgcore.dll is missing and then the paths it's tried, I have mach 3 *********.18 installed along with lazycam but I've also downloaded and installed the stand alone lazycam installer for version 3. Still the same message.

I've put the .exe file in the mach3 folder, I also did a search for the missing file and it was not found on the hard drive, this is with all files showing on a win2000  computer
nothing elso installed apart from mach.

Thanks
Steve

Forgot to add, this is with the nov19 version.

149

General Mach Discussion / Re: X axis driving down without command

« on: November 24, 2008, 11:35:15 AM »

I've had this recently and it turned out to be that old friend "electrical noise".

I'd been fiddling in my control box to replace a broken 4th axis controller and I'd pushed some of the wires around, I'd them been doing some cuts and the Z would climb or drop with no commands, messed up a small jobs before I noticed, anyway I checked in the control box and the Z step and direction wires were crossing some others so I straightened it all out and everything has been fine since.

150

General Mach Discussion / Re: Mill as a lathe

« on: November 24, 2008, 11:02:16 AM »

Thanks for that Hood, nice to have the confirmation.

I'm hoping to use it to profile some small gear cutters, I just have to think of a way to back them off for clearance.
There is a way were you offset the cutter and reprofile 1/4 of the cutter and then reset for each 1/4 this gets you 4 teeth with the ability to resharpen the cutter and keep the correct profile.

I was half way through making the profiling tools as in Ivan Laws book Gears and Gearcutting, but then I thought why am I going to all this effort when I've already got the CAD drawing of the tooth profile done and just need to have a CNC lathe to cut it.

This way I can turn the holder for the cutter, then profile them and they should end up concentric as I'm using an R8 blank so it will always go back in the same place.

Thanks
Steve