Lathe help

[Roger Peterson]

Is it possible to define a Ball endmill or say an indexable drill. Use this tool to do a drilling toolpath and then use the same tool to do a turning toolpath to rought out the hole that it just drilled to a larger diameter. So basically is there a way to define a tool that will work in a drill operation as well as a turning operation?

 

 

I am going to try a few things as soon as I post this but since the tools are defined differently I'm not sure if it will work.

 

 

Thank you,

Roger

[Roger Peterson]

Wow, was that easy! All I did was do the toolpaths just as I normally would and just select an endmill and everything worked great. Are there any other neat tricks you lathe guru's use out there to either save machine time or programming time?

 

 

[Threept82]

Our slants uses G74 for peck drilling and if you add differant variables turns it into a rough bore cycle. (Fanuc T11)

[Roger Peterson]

I think I spoke too soon. It seemed to work with a flat endmill but when I started to put a radius on it isn't cutting. Anybody ever do this?

 

 

Thanks,

[DavidB]

Roger,

 

Can you put a file on the FTP site I will take at look at your job for you.

 

[PE @ IHS]

I think that if you define the tool as an endmill, MC might not let you turn a rad because there is no front or back clarance on a 90 deg tool.

 

Perhaps try defining it as an 86 deg custom tool (the widest end is the cutting end). This way you have back clearance and MC can do collision checking during the rad cutting.

 

p.s. Iscar has a really nice tool that you can use for drilling, boring, as well as facing and OD turning. It works quite well for reducing toolchanges. You need to remember to reverse the spindle for the OD ops, of course.

[Reece L Gibson]

Create a custom tool Roger. Draw out your insert drill on another level or as a .mc9 file inside the "tools" folder.Pick the leading edge of the tool for reference, tell it which way the cutting direction is and It will comp to it pretty good.

I can put a couple of files up if you would like.

[Roger Peterson]

Please post or send me a file Reece. I'm looking to use something with the rough shape of a bullnose endmill. Maybe .625 diameter with a .125 corner radius. I definately appreciate it. I have tried a couple of things but I haven't had much time so anything to get me going would be great.

 

Peter, do you have customers using the iscar tool? How do they program using it for turning and drilling?

 

Thanks again,

[Roger Peterson]

Thanks for all the help guys, While I was working on a lathe post it hit me. So I stopped what I was working on went back and defined my tool as a grooving tool and voila' it works for a sphere mill or a bullnose style.

 

 

Thanks again