gangtool setup / backtools

Andy Pugh wrote:

Someone with a lathe config in front of them needs to experiment before we go too far down this route.

Looks good to me, the Z symbol is reversed, but other than that X and Z axes both move in the correct direction with positive and negative values and the tool plot is now on the top where it should be, with a slant bed / back tool lathe.

Well done, I shall just implement it with a preamble setting for ngcgui, as that is what I use almost exclusively.

regards

ArcEye wrote:

Andy Pugh wrote:

Someone with a lathe config in front of them needs to experiment before we go too far down this route.

Looks good to me, the Z symbol is reversed, but other than that X and Z axes both move in the correct direction with positive and negative values and the tool plot is now on the top where it should be, with a slant bed / back tool lathe.

Well done, I shall just implement it with a preamble setting for ngcgui, as that is what I use almost exclusively.

regards

I agree with all of ArcEye's findings. The Z symbol is reversed but shows on the backside of the Z axis, setting up back tools as type 8 would maybe fix that. Of course there is no onscreen indication that you are operating in a rotated coordinate system (except the tool indicator is behind the Z line) so you have to pay attention if you are rotated or not otherwise you could get into trouble of course.

All in all it works extremely well. A remap of G68 and G69 to turn off and on the rotation puts the icing on the cake.

How can we get this into the lathe section of the docs for others in the future?

Thanks all !!!

Well, I spent many hours attempting to remap G68 and G69 to the appropriate G10 rotation commands with total failure. I got a g68 and g69 subroutine to work but no luck remapping to it.


According to the docs for remap, only modal group 1 G codes can be remapped AND remapping G68 to the G10 makes it a modalgroup 0 ,, so no-can-do. If G68 and G69 are going to be implemented for this purpose it will have to be done by some of the developer boys it looks like.

I got a g68 subroutine setup and called by a G68 remap. If I put the G10 code line in that subroutine it errors out. SImply substituting M3 for the G10 line of code and it works nicely. If I type G68 on the MDI line, the spindle turns on. Put the G10 line back in, replacing the M3, and it is back to faulting.

If I call the G68 sub directly from the mdi line, with the G10 code in the sub, it works nicely. The G68 remap faults in that case.

It also worked nicely with a MSG line in the subroutine, a G68 in the MDI produced the message onscreen.

Success or failute seems to be determined by the code line executed in the subroutine. G10 (modalgroup 0) faults, M3 or a MSG command executes nicely on the remap.

The only difference I can see in the above tests was the G10 line in the subroutine file. G10 is a modalgroup 0 command AND in the remap doc it clearly states that only modalgroup 1 remaps are supported. Apparently, they mean it.

In all tests, no axis words were used.

I learned a lot last night experimenting and researching further.

BigJohnT wrote:

I did figure out that modal group 1 is a motion group and requires an axis word, so until motion group 0 is supported your much better off just using G10.

John

I don't see any choice at the present other than using G10. Its not that bad, at least the axis coordinate system can be rotated which makes handling rear tooling much simpler.