LinuxCNC Day 1

Hi Folks
This is my first step of what I'm sure will be a long LinuxCNC journey. As the owner of
a small engineering business with 6 elderly cnc machines I'm totally fed up with the expensive
stranglehold Fanuc et al have over someone like me.

I hope my background (Degree in Electronic & Electrical Eng and then programming PLC's for some years)
will enable me to retrofit existing machines with a new PLC/LinuxCNC ladder solution.

Could someone please advise on the first of many questions:

I seem to remember the G76 threading cycle on my Fanuc 0TA controlled lathe used 'Alternate Flank
Machining' and that this was somehow superior to a simpler cutting solution. So does the LinuxCNC code
incorporate this function and if not what would be the difference in what would be produced?


Regards
Rob

Hi and welcome

As the owner of a small engineering business with 6 elderly cnc machines I'm totally fed up with the expensive
stranglehold Fanuc et al have over someone like me.

A lot of industrial users come to Linuxcnc for the same reason.
It costs huge amounts of money to get spare parts for controllers with the processing power of a 1980s computer, whereas for the outlay on a few decent interface cards you can control from a modern computer and completely forget
DNC, tapes and all the other artifices to get round very limited memory (and the overdraft required to cover the engineers callout)

You would have to explain what alternate flank machining is.

The linuxcnc cycle allows for an infeed angle to cut more on one flank with the side of the tool than the other, as per standard with a manual lathe

www.linuxcnc.org/docs/devel/html/gcode/g...G76-Threading-Canned

regards

I think alternate flank threading is where the threading tool cuts more on one side, then on
the next pass it cuts more on the other side, alternating just a little back and forth on
each successive threading pass until the final pass is right down the center.
I'm not sure this really is very important unless you are machining one of
the beastly difficult alloys.

As far as I know, the default threading cycles do not do this. But, you can always
create your own macros that will duplicate such a threading cycle, and either
run them as a separate program to generate the G-code or integrate them
as a custom cycle.

Jon