Hi Tony,

I am into the pen making hobby. Most of most of my pens are turned by hand on a wood lathe but sometimes I require a few or more pens to be exactly the same.

All my turning is done on a mandrill and the stock is to the correct length when it goes onto the mandrill. All I need to do now is turn the profile.

I have attached a pic of the lathe with the stock on the mandrill. The stock is exactly 53mm long and that is the correct finished size.

I have also attached a profile done inn QCAD. LazyC converts the file OK and Mach3 cuts the profile. When I try to draw in the stock all goes ape. The stock diameter is 20mm.

Thanks for having a look.

Anton

Hi, Anton

What's the final major diameter of this pen part ?

Thanks, Chip

Hi Chip,

It depends on the type of pen but 12.75mm is about as big as I like to go.

Regards

Anton

Hi Anton,

try this to start with. All I've done is add a vertical line out to the 10mm stock radius ( 20mm dia). The code produced is not ideal in any way, but it would get a profile eventually.

Tony

Hi guys,
Been reading till I got a headache and still have questions. Maybe some one can cleae some of these details for me.
I have the lic. and have succeeded in creating code from SOME of my drawings and the ones posted here.
I have discovered that the numbers on tool description can cause failure to create paths. Some of those numbers are more self evident than others. Will someone speak to the definitions of these terms please? I've provided a capture showing the ones that confuse me, but others could be completely awash.

Thanks

Hi Tony,

thanks for your help last weekend. I can now see what you mean my adding a line to indicate stock size. With the help I even managed to create a half decent Gcode file. As you said, it is Beta software and it did a few funnies but much better than I ever had.

Cheers

Anton

Hi Anton,
pleased that it's started to work for you. I played around a bit more after I did that post & found that by choosing the correct tool parameters & deleting a few moves the code started to look quite reasonable.

Jhowelb,
the Margin setting seems to mean tool clearance. Increasing this will give a greater clearance during rapids etc. Back Angle I haven't played with yet, but Max Penetration can have a big effect on the results. I think it is the distance the tool can project into the work before fouling occurs. I find that setting it to something like 10 or 15 (mm) often gets rid of uncut sections.

hope this helps,

Tony

Thanks Tony,

Till Art decides to give us a manual we have to define his terms to our our purpose and your seem to fit as well or better than anything I can conjure up.

As I learn by tinkering I will return to contribute anything positive that I can find.

Again, Thanks!

Back angle, what ever it means, has a dramatic effect on tool path. A change from .5 degrees to 5.5 degrees had the illustrated effect.

Hope this m9ight help someone or at least stimulate discussion.
jb

Hmm,

I've just looked at my evaluation copy of Cutviewer & the tool setup in there has an angle marked 'BA'. For a Diamond tip standing on one of it's points and leaning to the right the angle between the right hand face and the horizontal is angle BA. Sorry I can't give a diagram at the moment.

Tony