I have a mill that uses a swivel head (indexing B-axis) to mill pockets at an angle into long bars that get fed along the x-axis into the machine by a kind of bar feeder. The bar feeder is not involved in the actual machining it just moves the bar along to the next machining position.
So the work flow is: clamp bar - mill pocket - unclamp bar - feed bar to next position - clamp bar - mill pocket - unclamp bar - feed bar to next position - etc.
I have the kinematics working and have assigned the bar feeder to axis U. All this works but the toolpath display is a bit annoying
because U is actually meant to be an incremental move along the tools x-axis and that produces a somewhat wonky tool display because my B-axis is not zero and so the move of the U-axis goes off at the set angle.
This is no big deal but it did make me wonder if there is a way to move an axis without affecting the tool display.
Is there a way to assign other axis letters or "disconnect" some axis' from the display?
How do people usually deal with an auxillary axis like a bar feeder?
Thanks
