Lathe grooving for lathe newbie

[Mark C]

Hello All,

Our lathe programmer is on vacation, so I was asked if I could do a part for them by the leadman. It's a pretty sinple part but I'm a mill programmer and haven't really spent much time with MasterCam lathe. What I can't figure out to do is a single sided dovetail groove in the face of a plate. I have drawn the groove and the tool that I want to use and created a custom tool from it. The problem is that the tool goes too deep and too large in the x axis when roughing and doesn't finish the groove at all.

I've tried everything that I can see. I looked at the MC8 files and none have anything that I can use for a non-rectangular face groove. The help file says to create an outer boundry using stock defination. I've tried using the actual stock boundry, offsetting it away from the stock boundry, and all it will do is plunge outside the groove and go deeper.

I'm sure it's real simple, but if you don't know how, then its not. If I have to, I'll just analyze the drawing to get my tangent points and offset as needed for the width of the tool and type it in manually. It's just a matter of pride, not being able to do it on MasterCam.

You can bet when the lathe programmer gets back I'm going to ask for some lessons.

Anyhow, sorry for the long post. Any help would be appreciated form a mill guy to anyone who can help

[roy g. biv]

E-mail me your mc8's [email protected], and I will see if I can help.

[ROB]

does your control reads diameter or radius

makes a big difference.

thats what you have to program to, it's different than programming for mills.

i program mills and lathes.

hope this helps!

[McRae]

Let me interpret.

 

The part is a casting or forging of some sort that requires a facegroove to bo finished. The tool is a form tool as well??

 

If so, only use a facetool, and then use the deepest edge as the contour and don't worry about backplot.

 

If you require to profile the groove - either out of solid or a casting, chain the facegroove geometry and then use the stock boundry as the outside of the groove. Play with the settings on the tool paths a little and you should be ok. Also look at the tool page an explicitly look for the tool setting corners as this will greatly affect success. Also remember that a lathe is X(Diameter) and Z(Linear) and if you are specifying a size using X that it will be a diameter (ie - offset a RADIAL amount above centerline).

 

Lathe paths are easy to produce, making them correctly is the challenge...

[Mark C]

Thanks for the answers guys

I found where he kept the lathe manual and lathe tutorial, so I've started to ,as they say, "begin at the beginning" and learn it from scratch. Things are easy when you know how.

By the way, the hot part with the dovetail that I was asking about. I found out Friday the job was cancelled!!

Thanks again

[chris m]

quote:

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By the way, the hot part with the dovetail that I was asking about. I found out Friday the job was cancelled!!

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Wow am I glad I'm not the only one