shegan,
LazyTurn is not working for you?
There is a manual iin Members Docs for LazyTurn which decribes how to install it.
RICH

everything works great, I love it.  Have read the manual through and love it.  Would recommend it to anybody.

Art, Rich - what's the trick in specifying the final part diameter correctly?  I'm still working with these relatively minor curves for turning pens barrels and it seems the diameter I specify turns out to be the diameter of the leftmost edge (nearest the headstock) rather than the maximum diameter of the turned part.  If that's the rule, great!  Nice and simple.  If not, how should it work and what should I specify?

Thank you,   Joe

Hi Joe:

  Im not sure I understand the question. In LTurn you specify the stock diameter, and the drawing then specifies how much to remove.
The max diameter of the part should be the result more of the drawing than the program. Now it is possible that due to the roughing and/or
the finish-rough stage  being set to too large a step it may miss some of the final diamter cut.. but that shouldnt be the norm.

  If , for example, you specify one final finish-rough pass of .1mm ( or say .01") , then the final part should be within .1mm of the drawing final
diameter. Of course you probably see better than I since your using the program where some curves may be harder to cut exactly than others.
Minor curves, such as thoose in pens may have a arc radisu so large that even small roughing cannot really show the arc fully. Hopefully this winter
I will geta final finish pass working to everyones approval. Im teaching myself a great deal of calculus at the moment so by the time coding season
comes along I should be much better at intuiting the necessary steps Ill have to take.

  Thx for the feedback, nice to see the program is being used,

Art

Hi Art,

Thank you for the quick response! 

Maybe there's a simpler way to ask the question.  On the display there are two triangles, a brown one and a blue one.  My understanding is the blue one sets the diameter of the stock and the brown one I understood to be the desired maximum diameter of the finished part.  For instance, I have a simple curve with left end diameter of 0.54" a maximum diameter about an inch to the right of that which is 0.595" and the rightmost diameter is 0.465".  I was defining the brown triangle value to be that 0.595" but that definitely didn't give me the desired left end/right end diameters.  The profile itself is simply a floating curve so those "end diameters" aren't specified in the drawing - it's a "floating" profile.  Defining those end radii in the drawing didn't seem to result in the desired diameters either.

I appreciate all the effort you're putting into this project!

All the best,   Joe

Joe:

 Ahh yes, I see what you mean. That triangle actually sets a scaling factor is all, so if a job's max was 1" , it could be made 2".. etc.. But all curves and points in it equally scale outwards..or inwards.. so the end diamter will be a factor of what the original was. If the right was different from the left originally, it still will be after scaling ...

Art

JOE,
There is a manual for LazyTurn in the Members Docs which explains what each of the ruler pentagons indicate. Ordinarily you would only change the blue one to suite a stock size of your choice verses the one generrated by the program.
Your drawing contains all the infomation required by LazyTurn to generate pathing. The information  is contained in the DXF file.There is no need to specifiy diameters.
 
Post a version 12 DXF of your profile.
RICH
 

Hmm......Missed that one in the manual and i will bet there are a lot more, but, until we have a strange pair of eye's looking it over we'll never know.
RICH

Hi Guys!

Rich, I'm still working on getting v12 DXFs.  I installed ACAD2002 and haven't yet figured out how to get the curves I want directly.  So I do my layout in CorelDRAW, export to v11 DXF, import into ACAD2002 then save out as v12.  Honestly, it doesn't seem to make much difference.  There's just something I'm not getting but I'm confident the lightbulb will eventually go on.    In the meantime, I'm loading my curves into LTurn and playing with the brown diameter value until I see the end diameters I'm looking for.

I just tried to create a simple stepped bushing profile and get something similar.  This bushing has a max diameter of 0.476" for 0.5" then drops down to 0.358".  The GCode appears to get within 0.001 of the desired max diameter but the small diameter is 0.050" too large.

Cheers,   Joe

Joe,
-There are differences between the DXF versions and some will work and some may create a problem. I cover DXF files at a very high level in Appendix "C".
- Haven't used Corel draw in years and suggest you use ACAD and dump Corel, but then that's just my personal opinion. I have resolved myself to either Microstation or ACAD and don't bother with anything else since  after all these
years of dealing with vendors, design firms, conversations, 100's of different "CAD" programs I am just plain tired of the magic wand  / differences between them .
- Looked at your dxf and it's a bunch of polylines. In APPENDIX "B" , 5.9  Compose the profile from simple elements.
So suggest you don't use polylines.
- Remember that when you use a cutter the program takes into consideration the nose radius , etc. in generating the Gcode, so if you look at the gcode , the pathing should be correct but accounts for offsets.
- Also suggest that you start your profile at X & Z ( 0,0 ) , see figure 3.5.1 in APPENDIX "B".
- VERY IMPORTANT .....LazyTurn at this time dosen't generate a finish pass. SO there should  be some stock left for a finish pass. You can use LazyCAM Turn or hand code for the finish pass.
- Draw your profile accurately with the diameters the way you want them. Yes you can scale but it's not what i would recomend.
RICH