Hard to tell exactly what you have here but I would create a profile of one tooth of the hob and rotate it about the centerline of the hob several small angular increments. Then rotate those copies about the centerline of the gear blank. Then connect the copies with a surface. Of course you need to have the info about hobbing the gear to get the correct ratio, center distance, angles and so forth.

Does it come with the PH10M/10MQ motorized probe head?

Get used to breaking styli when learning the CMM (and a few after learning) If the CMM reports the part is out of tolerance, check it with conventional measuring tools before throwing it out or changing settings on the CNC machine. Small foreign objects (like scotch-brite grit) or tiny burrs, can cause bad measurements on the CMM.

Always good to have a cheap machine on the floor to try out new hires on. And there are lots of people coming out of schools who only know how to run Haas.

Redesign it as a casting. Like an air-cooled motorcycle head.

Technigrip is a good fixture. I use a torque wrench to get consistent clamping force on it. I just looked at Garr's pdf and for the 143r they write "For CAT 40 machines using tools over 5/8" diameter, speeds and feeds may need to be reduced by as much as 50%"

Has this lathe been bumped (crashed) in the past? The turret might need re-alignment. Take the drill out of the holder, put an indicator on the chuck and sweep the hole in the holder to see if it is concentric with the spindle. If that is good, it could be a bent drill. The X offset is not 0, it is the distance from the machine home position to the spindle centerline.

Could be it just needs shorter moves.

The finish signal just allows the program to continue past the M code that required it. For example on a lathe, when the chuck open M code is read, the program waits for the finish signal from the sensor on the draw bar to close. If it does not get the signal, the program just halts there.

I've never used Heidenhain and just curious how the name is pronounced.

the problem is the 3 place R values are larger than the X Y move. That shifts the center of each arc. If you measure the bore in the Y direction it is probably to size but smaller across the X direction.

I'd be talking to the engineer who designed it. If the slots are there just to lighten it up, they might be amenable to replacing each slot with a few holes, which could be gundrilled.

That 5-axis would make a good paint shaker.

I like that idea, but our drawings usually get bubbled after the cnc is programmed. I'm in the habit of writing the tool number or op# on my copy of the drawing next to the dimensions that it cuts.

Check the color of the cross hairs in the config, might be the same as the background color

I am sure we can all see some very big flaws, the problem I am faced with is more that people are extremely resistance to change. Any ideas on that one? A financial incentive usually helps.

To set the Wear Offset to zero for a tool number _n_ G10 L13 Pn R0 Just put that in a looping macro that increments the variable n, to set all the wear offsets to 0

I hate to point this out, but theoretically, he is correct. http://files.engineering.com/download.aspx?folder=4c156c25-25e6-4f1c-933b-f419e7d4192d&file=Contoured_features_as_datum.pdf A cmm with a scanning probe can take thousands of points on a curved surface and fit a datum from a CAD file to it. However, from a _practical_ standpoint he is wrong and should have some conventional datums to align the CMM for inspecting the holes. What you could do, if you have the cad model is, create a plane which intersects his datum surface in 3 points, record those points and probe them to create a theoretical flat plane on the cmm. You would have to create a Start Alignment first, from other reference surfaces to find the location of those 3 points. Hope this helps.

As I recall, the Robodrill will also alarm out if it toolchanges to an empty magazine position.

Thanks Cathedral. Fixed segment length was it. In the Smoothing section. I'll try the polar output too, JParis.

I think you want "Depth Cuts" as well as "Multipass" just for the finish pass. Open the Depth Cuts page of the tree and click the check. For max rough step, enter .3 # of Finish Cuts enter 1 Finish Step enter 0.1 Then go to the Multipass page. Rough Number enter 1 Spacing enter 0 Finish Number enter 1 Spacing enter .01 Machine finish passes at (click) Final Depth Do a Backplot or Verify to try it out.

I was playing around with this in X8, milling a hex on the end of a lathe part, by interpolating C and X with an endmill parallel to the Z-axis. The first time, I got G-code output of about 15 degrees per step and then tweaked a couple things and got around 2.5 degrees per line. Not sure how this was acheived or how to get a specific output. Any input?

That might work on some controls but most controls will need a vector like: G91 G40 Y.0001 You are absolutely right about needing to know whats going on at the control.

It's like the OP said, just project the drill points to a surface and then drill incrementally to those points

This is a off at a tangent to the discussion but I found it interesting. http://www.pro-micron.de/en/products/sensory-tool-holder-spike/