Rich Hi,  downloaded and printed out mach turn, found what you wanted me to see... will study a bit. All other parts have been ordered...thanks bob

Rich... in reading Mach Turn pg 4-8, it says..."The limit switches are connected to external logic."  In this case please explain "external logic."   bob

I don't use switches on any of my machines. For the lessons they are disabled.
BTW, since your working with wood I would suggest you cover the pulley's and index.

RICH

 Rich... are your saying you have no limit switches on your machine for protection...how, how do you keep your machine safe? bob

Once I figure out how to set up the index and pulleys, then I will cover as you suggest .  thanks bob

Hi,
seat belts in a car don't keep you safe...avoiding the accident in the first place is safe.

Sure seatbelts/airbags etc make surviving an accident much more likely but try to avoid the accident.

Craig

 

are your saying you have no limit switches on your machine for protection

That is correct. I never viewed them as protection as Graig replied.
I do use soft limits on the lathe. Most of my work is one of kind.

For all the lessons, all one needs to do is touch off to the work "rather closely" and make sure the work is positioned so one can run the program without crashing the machine.  In fact just use a straw or something flexible and rather straight and not even have the cutter / toothpick turning.

All the lessons are focused on a few basic gcodes. The "killer" is all the associated commands that influence
the writing of the program. One in particular is understanding feedrate  which is being explained  one at a time
and in depth for understanding as it relates to the 4th axis.  

You can do without an index for a while. Yes it will show the rpm, but, you should still do the spread sheet stuff.
I am using a stepper driven indexing table for all the lessons which does not have an index for rpm readout.
There is learning to be had from spread sheet use.........................I don't know how much we will get into actual lathe use.
It's different animal, and if you don't know how different animals behave, why put them both in the same cage!

RICH

Points well taken... but I was rear ended as a young man while sitting stopped--at a stop light.  I was injured, the settlement paid for the down payment on my home... ********* does come on its own...   I would not recommend this for people in general... bob

Rich

In Mach 3  we can use the up-down-left-right buttons etc for xyz movements... but is there a button that will move A-axis??? bob

Bob,
Go into config and assign keybaord keys for the A+- just as you did for the  XYZ +-.
Tab key opens the jog flyout.

RICH

When I went to the hotkeys setup. I clicked A++.  Why call it A++? instead of A+?  Then after selecting A++ I hit the left bracket key. ([).  Then for A-- I hit the right bracket key.  Then I tabbed and got the jog flyout.  If I selected the step jog and hit either of the bracket keys nothing happens!  If I choose the Cont. then the A-axis moves but it appear irrational... if I hit the opposite bracket key it does not return to zero and so forth... it just moves all over the place...so what gives? bob