gangtool setup / backtools

Yes John, I read further on g10 coordinate system rotation and it does sound like that would work nicely for lathes with front/rear tooling. I also found that the G68/G69 is normally just a toggles the rotation on and off as needed for front/rear tools. Going to have to give this a dry run on the lathe today and see how it behaves.

I don't think it is a g code remap situation. The G10 would be used to set the rotation (180 deg in this case), the G68/G69 would have to be setup to merely toggle that predefined rotation on and off. So, G68/69 would have to be added.

I believe that the commercial controllers for front/rear turrets have the 180 degree rotation done in a init string or similar considering the value would always be 180 degrees. No need for a operator to set this every time, he just selects front or rear tooling by putting a G68 or G69 along with his toolchange.

This is looking pretty good. After evaluation, it would be good to document it in the lathe docs.

I am going to play with this today on my machine. (gang tooled lathe) Linuxcnc is new to me and I may not be the best to evaluate this completely but I can certainly check the basic functionality out.

Thanks, BigJohnT

WIsh you had some of those suggestions earlier in this thread. Using axis coordinate system rotation for handling front/rear lathe tools was never suggested. Once known, using remap and the command formats are pretty obvious. I try not to ask things with obvious answers that can be found with a bit of research.

andypugh wrote:

gmouer wrote:

WIsh you had some of those suggestions earlier in this thread

I wish it had occurred to me.
I only ever thought of it as useful for skewed work in a mill.

You have been extremely helpfull Andy. It looks like rotation was implemented mostly with milling in mind. Searching the web is where I found coordinate system rotation referenced to lathe front/rear tools. My friend told me about using G68 and G69 on several lathes he operated.

Its been a valuable learning experience. This question won't stump us next time ! LOL

I will report back later on how it works.