Hi all I am not sure if this is the place for this question but here goes.

I have just added a forth axis to my set up and all is working fine through Mach3

I want to mill in the round and cannot find any tutorial to show me how it is done.

Any advice would be apreciated
Ray

It's just like X, Y, or Z, but it's A (assuming you set it to A, anyway).  You can set Mach to degrees or distance for A, so if you go "g0 X1 a360", it'll do 1 rev over that 1 unit travelled on X.

Sorry for the short & rudimentary post.  Give an example of what you'd like to do.

What I would like to do is carve some 3D models I have but instead of carving in the flat plane
 I would like to mount the timber blank onto the forth axis and mill the complete 3D model in one go.

I see what you mean buy using the method you say and I will give that a try.

I guess what you mean is to take one of the sides of the design and in fact wrap this around the diameter of the work   
the circumference being equal to length of side.

Thanks
Ray

MeshCAM can do 4th axis inexpensively. www.meshcam.com

Thanks Jerry, I will have a look at that.
Rayc

See this: http://www.machsupport.com/forum/index.php/topic,5281.msg35922.html#msg35922

MeshCAM can do 4th axis inexpensively. www.meshcam.com

If I remember right, meshcam doesnt really do 4th axis.  It does multi-sided code.... X Y Z on a portion, then rotates A, then does XYZ again.  Correct me if I'm wrong, its been 6 months or so since I looked at it.... Also, dont get me wrong, Meshcam is one of the best values in hobbyist toolpathing.

It's indexed 4th axis, but it's still 4 axis, and a lot cheaper than any other methods that I know of.

here is a pretty good tutorial

http://deskcnc.com/Rotary_Tutorial.html

Thanks for the replies a lot to get my head around but the end results should be worth the effort
Ray