WCS for Lathe?

[kunfuzed]

Do you think Lathe will ever be able to move the WCS like you do in Mill? It would be nice to program to just one part, and not have multiple parts on different levels. Or can you do this and I'm just missing it? Seems like it should be able to work the same.

 

Oh, and while I'm at it. How do you guys handle a part that has to bounce from lathe, to mill, back to lathe?

 

We've got a part like that, and the two turned features aren't concentric, but at an angle from eachother. So I can see orienting the part first for the lathe op, then moving the mill wcs accordingly, but in order to do the final lathe op, you need to copy the part to a new level. Is there a way to do everything on one part without moving anything or copying geometry?

[crazy^millman]

They may be but I move everything. Yes I have made errors in doing this and yes it is easy to make mistakes, but we can not get lathe operation from getting dirty just by turning on/off coolant, or by changing an rpm on an operation to to think Lathe is going to get to the point where it is going to use WCS well lets just say I would not hold my breathe.

[kunfuzed]

Yeah, I'm thinking your right about the holding your breathe part. I think our reseller passed this request on to Mcam for us.

[kunfuzed]

Any new developments in the last two years? Mainly we need to go from mill to lath and back without moving the solid. Shop policy not to move it.

 

thanks.

[G10X0Y0Z0]

what about saving your different operations as STL's to work between machines. i did that to a couple parts, but they are all in the same file. wcs on the lathe just shifts in the Z axis but on the mill i rotate the graphic view and save them as new WCS's for the mill. nothing moves, justs the graphic views.Am I making any sense?

[kunfuzed]

I'm not sure I get what your saying. What planes are you using?

 

I only have about a year of experience programming lathes in Mcam, and that was 6 years ago in V8.1. Back then I was just working with 2d wireframe and programing everything in top view and rotating geometry as needed.

[G10X0Y0Z0]

in the lathe i use the +D+Z WCS and C & T planes based upon what plane the live tools are cutting.

Eg. WCS +D+Z C/T Right to mill on the face of the stock. when i first started programming the lathe a year ago i had a hard time understanding how to use the C&T planes for the live tooling

 

in the mill after rotating the view i create new wcs's from the graphic view menu. WCS & C/T planes are the same in the mill. all the rotation and work offsets etc. are hardwired in the posts for each MD. every time the post sees a different WCS it generates the rotation and/or offset based on the MD.

[Bob Hedrick]

kunfuzed - You have mail.

[Chris Rizzo]

quote:

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Shop policy not to move it.

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Tell shop the part has to be moved to lathe coordinates or shop gets no program.

[kunfuzed]

Thank you Bob. I would be interested in seeing your example, although I think it still isn't quite what were looking for.

 

Obviously we do move it anyways to make the part, but when changes are made to a model, its a lot easier to deal with. And while I don't fully use change recongnition to its potential, it seems like this would be a necessity.

[Alvaro Gil - Cimquest-inc.com]

Bump

 

+1 on this request for CNC to add WCS to lathe asap. Got burned this weekend working on a part that was not by default in lathe coordinates.