thanks john, I couldn't find anything in the machinery handbook. what would "typically round within tolerance be"? is that the min and max difference? if so would that be the id min max or the pitch min max difference?

I made some square internally threaded nuts recently that got rejected.the threads were checked on a gage. the thread is 3-1/2 16 N3.the id tol for the minor is 3.432 to 3.44. they say the id is out of round but the most I can measure out is .003. I thredmilled these so the thread will be the same out as the id bore as they were done at the same time. what is the criteria for rejecting a part like this? what is the max out of round something like this could go (and still work fine on the go no go gages)?

thanks john. I always used alt t before but didn't think of it for this now. is there a way I can get it to show always when I regen and the use alt t to turn it off?

in earlier versions I used to be able to regen a toolpath and see it on the screen immediately. very useful for seeing how my lead ins and out were or if they failed and left them out altogether. now I have to backplot to see the path. im sure its just a setting or something. thanks

one of our engineers is using this for a project now. im just curious what it wrong with bismuth?

it came out great.i used the model from grabcad and extracted all of the edge curves. I deleted all but what I needed.then I scaled them slightly larger than the sphere I created for the baseball and projected them onto the sphere surface "normal". after that it was just countour with a .032 ball and swap y for the rotary.

my rapid settings are as shown on the pinned dogleg rapid post at the top.im not sure what to set it to for x z and a motion though.

I did this job before without incident but had a problem this time. im making a baseball trophy and I turned the outer shape on the lathe.i put it in a 4th axis rotary on a has mill and engraved the laces all the way around usind axis substitution.then I contourd the seem line all the way around as a single 3d contour using axis sub again. I guess this time when I chained the seem it was not near the end of the laces but it was not a separate operation. the .032 ballmill gouged the part as it was trying to get to the new start point of the beginning of the seem contour.it did not show a gouge at all in verify. im suspecting it is a "dogleg " rapid problem but im not sure. I know I could have put the retract up high but there were a LOT of moves with the laces. im usually pretty confident that what I see on my screen is what ill get at the machine. any ideas?

thanks for the code sample. forgive me if im wrong but ive never done anything like this before. my question is that it output xz and c. does that mean it was actually in a mill mode rather than a lathe type mode? are you limited in rpm to the feed of the c axis?

and here is a very simple one! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FpP7iTKuWpw

here is another video that shows the tool tracking the center of rotation.this is moving off center although its a screw machine without the "y"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r_LcY7Q8X0w

I found this too. it shows the code at the end. it looks like its moving 3 axis.not sure if the y is moving. http://play.tojsiab.com/Z1g3NWdhQWNXV0E1

is there any "code" for the part on the 1st example? or is it just some type of equation? I would love to see even what just part of that program looks like.

the more we watch this the crazier it gets! we were discussing in class last night how this can even be done. I didn't notice till this morning that this cannot be done on a lathe without a Y axis.the y is constantly changing to keep in the center of the area it is working on at the time!

thanks that is crazy! I would love to try something like that. it was even synced so it could take a finish pass.

thanks for the replies. I scaled it down to half and it took it fine. I wonder if there is a max file size? ill keep playing with it but I would like to reduce it to the absolute minimum that is needed.

no ,that's the thing john.this raster image is very clear and defined it just has a lot going on.

but there must be something that is set wrong because it doesn't even try.i cant smooth it until it does the conversion and I can only use splines for that. I was hoping that maybe there was a "max number of entities " parameter or something I could bump up a bit.

I asked this once before but don't think I got replies. rast to vect works great for me and I use it all the time.the only problem I have with it is if the file is too detailed it errors out right away and crashes.it doesn't even seem to try to do it .the only way I can get it to do anything is to use splines and I usually don't get the nice outline I do with the other standard styles. any ideas?

we wound up using the booleen method. its actually an elipse with a tilted center for the revolve cut.

I have a round shape solid and I want to revolve a taper on the top.i select the closed chain and it will allow me to go 359.999 deg but not 360.it says it would be a disjointed body.if I go less than the 360 it leaves an undesirable sliver of material. am I doing something wrong?

sweet thanks that did it!

also some of these contours and lines are extremely smaal and im using a 30 deg engraver.when I go to verify the geometry is on the stock model.how can I turn the geometry off?

I have a very detailed drawing that I wanted to use the engraving function on.this means they would have to be all closed chains.tedious work but I got it done.it worked fine but I had to scale it down to fit on the part I needed to engrave it on .I scaled it and regened but it came up with an error of zero length line.i guess there is a min length that a line can be. when I scaled it back up it looks like things got screwed up somehow and now im fixing it again. I guess if I see the error zero lenth line again I should just stop at that point?

that's an awesome path ! thanks.