Hello All
I am not terribly new to CNC concepts but I've never used Mach. We are running Mach 4 on our 4 axis homebuilt, rebuilt, and re re built Ornamental Turning lathe. It was a teamwork effort started in the early 90's and the lathe is called the HaWK which is an acronym for For Dave Ha... Ken W, and me Mark K. Ken and I are still active in the project, We unfortunately lost Dave 5 years ago. We have Clearpath servo motors on the A axis, Z, and X axis'. and a microstepping stepper on the B axis. The A is our main work holding axis parallel to the X axis. Its motor moves the carriage containing the Z and B axis'. Its rather like a mill with a rotary 4th axis. The cutter rides on the B axis and is able to revolve 360 degrees, though in use, only a small portion of this range will likely be used. Ken initially developed the software interface to run the machine. It was a very good start as we did not have or use g code. I am now trying to learn that and Mach 4 on the fly. The machine is nearly mechanically sound. All axis' are controlled and limited in range by optical sensors to prevent crashes. Our mechanical limitations are 1 minute resolution on the A, .0001" on X and Z and less than (<).01 degrees on the B I am retired from teaching Industrial Arts, Shop! Even though forced to adopt Technology Education curricula I steadfastly still believe in the power of "SHOP" and it permeated my teaching practice until I retired 3 years ago. Mark