Shape Library

tommylight wrote:

I really hope no one sees this......
Phill, what are the chances of adding a square tube thingy to this ? Some details :
4 Axis machine with say X is the long one, Y is the short one, Z is the usual automatic THC thingy and A is the rotating one,
Since we use THCAD and that thing is fast and smooth, i would skip all the complicated math required and just have A axis move in 90 degree increments as that would simplify everything immensely, the only thing remaining to tackle would be at every A axis move of 90 Degree there would have to be added an Y axis move of the width of the square tube, say 80mm, and the THC would do it's job of following the up and down during that period. There is also the caveat that the feed rates of the A and Y axis would have to be tuned to move in sync so the torch does not loose position, but that is another topic altogether.
New thread, or delete and disappear ?

phillc54 wrote:

Would this just be a feature that you would append after a shape and it would rotate A 90^o then move X to zero which would be the edge of the tube and Y to somewhere.
So you would cut a shape, do this move then cut another shape...

rodw wrote:

I'm still not clear on what you want to do. Do you just want to cut holes and not sever the part? I think you could take the A axis position (in degrees 0,90, 180,270), divide it by 90 and multiply the result by the width (80mm).
This would result in an offset for each face of 0,80,160,240mm. Then you could let External offsets do its thing. But I think you would have to make sure you were back on face 0 before turning offsets off to allow them to unwind. (actually the offsets might need to be negative)

phillc54 wrote:

All you need is one of these: