Hello,
It would be great if Mach Turn could be used for simple small parts on my mill.   For small parts like firing pins and such.  Chuck the work into a chuck on the spindle and mount a tool holder in a vice on the table.  Could this be made to work?

Thanks,

Mike

Yes, just set up a Turn profile.
Hood

Hood,
How do you set up Mach3 Turn to work with the mill?
Mike

What you would do is Open MachTurn then set the X, Y and Z  to same step/dir pins as you have on the mill. Motor tuning etc would be the same as well. You would then just have to mount the tool in the vice and work in the spindle and move the Y until it was spot on centre. Your X and Z would act the same as a mill. If you have Home switches then you could have a Home Off Value for both X and Y and that would mean when you commanded to go to X zero Y Zero the tool would be exactly spindle centre but for that to work each time you used MachTurn you would need a means of setting the tool and vice to exactly the same position each time. After that there would be no use for the Y in any code, you would only programme for X and Z axis.
Hood

Hood,
Thank you so much!  You made my week!

Mike

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wbfXXeiSHsw
This was posted on the lazy turn thread. Nice bit of bush turning on a mil (I think). I liked the lack of need for a tool changer and you could use almost as many tools as you liked up to how ever many you can fit on your table. Setting it all up may take some time though.

I think in that You Tube vid it would be Mach3Mill profile being used. As you say setup would be a right pain. If you were doing repeat jobs you could make up a sub plate with all the tools on it, have it so you can reference this sub plate and just place it on the table each time you wanted to do the job

Hood

Have a stud on the template that you could clamp in the spindle then jog it to wherever you wanted and some parallel guide rail on the bottom of the template to line up with the T slots then Z axis it down on to the bed clamp and away you go bish bosh. I thought you could use mach turn swapping the Z and Y axis as you suggested but have the tool selection as a tool change sub routine.  Might actually be easier for a one off batch of small sized jobs than building a tool changer on your Lathe.

Think with the above setup it would be easier using Mill profile but maybe not.

Hood

Gimme a few months at this before I start disagreeing with you HOOD,  for now if you say it then I believe it.  << tongue firmly in cheek.