Mill Single Point Spline Broaching - Spindle Orient?

Hello friends, 

I've got a 3axis mill running the 7i96s card with a servo spindle with an encoder connected back to the controller. I would like to be able to broach splines around vertical cylinders with this machine using a single point cutter. I was thinking that it should be possible to have the controller move the spindle to a specified angle, hold that angle then run the Z axis down, make a cut, move around to the next position, re-angle the spindle and repeat. 

It would also be great to have the machine orient the spindle to a set location when it stops at the end of each cut so I dont have to fiddle around spinning it by hand to line up the wrench for tool holder changes. 

From what I'm reading this can be done using the M19 orient command but, being the somewhat ludditerious fella that I am, adding the necessary code to the .ini and .hal files is a daunting proposition and has left me a bit stumped. 

I've attached my current hal and ini files below, any suggestions on how to get this happening would be grand. 

Thanks! 

 

There are quite a few threads on the forum (you can search for 'orient' in the titles) covering this, as well as examples.

In short:

• Using a VFD and induction motor is possible, but is dependent on the motor and VFD.
  • I did not have great success as my motor is a 2-pole and the VFD couldn't orient it to a very precise position.  My solution was a pneumatic shot-pin to lock it in position for the ATC
  • Others have reported perfectly satisfactory results with thier hardware without resulting to mechanical locks
• Using a servo is, I think, likely to result in better performance.  Positional acuracy as well as the ability to hold that position for your broaching should be improved over a VFD.
• The basic configuration is to use two PID loops and switch between them.
  • PID #1 - spindle velocity mode
  • PID #2 - spindle orient mode
  • Switch - uses a mux component to switch between the two PIDs.

I have multiple examples of a spindle/orient available, but they're pretty complicated with other features and would be hard for someone else to follow or decode.  Have a search in the forum and if you can't find anything that makes sense, I'll try to simplify mine for you.