I have built a small prototype CNC engraving machine. It will be engraving the face of small brass and silver discs using cutters much like lathe cutting tools ( ie, non-rotating). It uses the X and Z axes in their normal fashion but not Y. My third axis is a rotary table configured as the A axis. Jogging the various axes around works just fine.
My CAM program is Sheetcam which does 2.5D G-code. (The engraving is 2.5D cutting so I really don't want to complicate things by using 3D CAD or CAM.) Sheetcam will not produce G-code for an A axis and you cannot configure Mach 3 with Y as a rotary axis - only A,B, or C. At least, not without some sort of work around.
This is a real puzzle and I'm not sure where to turn. I would prefer to stay with both Sheetcam and Mach 3 but I'm beginning to think that this will not work. Any thoughts ?