I am playing around milling out GT2 pulley teeth with a 1.2 mm ball end mill and a rotary table (A axis).
(Mach3 .062, ESS, W7, 1024.set)
Pass 1 digs out the main groove: fine.
Passes 2, 3 & 4 round off the sides of the groove with the side of the cutter, in little steps. For this to work the pulley has to be rotated and the cutter offset sideways a bit. The whole idea works OK (but needs values to 0.01 mm).
BUT
Getting a display which resembles what the job looks like has been difficult.
Obviously the A axis has to be enabled.
Note that the Z=0 point is on the surface of the object being machhined, not on the A axis CL. So the Rotation Radius for the A axis on the Settings page has to be non-zero - that works too.
But what value to put in the DRO? Radius, or Diameter?
Many years ago there was a so-called bug fix which changed the label on the DRO from 'Rotation Diameter' to 'Rotation Radius' in order to get the surface cutting speed working correctly. However I don't care about the surface speed. All I would like is a credible display.
But if I enter the radius the display is pretty awful, and does not look what I am doing (but the machining works).
If I enter the diameter the display looks accurate (wrt the real world) and the machining is fine.
Does anyone know whether the bug fix was only partial: surface speed was fixed but not the display component? That would explain my problem.
Cheers
Roger