CAM software for turning

[paul tomlinsonParticipant @paultomlinson71988]

Last year I purchased a CNC mill, having taught myself CAD (turbocad), CAM(cut 2D) and MACH 3 I am now fairly happy with production on the mill. I have now bought a simple second hand lathe again using MACH 3, could anyone suggest a simple CAM package purely for turning?

[paul tomlinsonParticipant @paultomlinson71988]

[David ColwillParticipant @davidcolwill19261]

I too became reasonably proficient with my mill but always struggled with turning. In the end I bought Dolphin cad cam for both the mill and the lathe. After a fairly steep learning curve I now use it for doing all of my milling. Although I have only done 1 turning job on it, I had few problems. The big advantage being that I am more familiar with it because it is very similar for mill and turn. Also the help from Andre and Micheal is first class. It is worth speaking to them to find out prices but I doubt you will get a better deal elsewhere as I spent ages looking.

Hope this helps.

David.

[blowlampParticipant @blowlamp]

CamBam will do straightforward turning and simply eclipses Cut 2D for milling.

CamBam Website.

Martin.

[Anonymous]

Paul,

If I've got the right person, then I'm pleased that you've got to grips with the Tormach mill.

As far as simple, ie, no live tooling, CNC lathes go quite a lot of commercial CNC shops don't bother with CAM. The range of operations on a simple lathe is narrower than on a mill, and there are a lot more canned cycles for lathe operations. So it's often quicker to write the G-code direct rather than use CAM.

I'll be interested to see the capabilities, and price, of the Tormach CNC lathe when it appears; but I suspect that for me at least the price/usefulness ratio will not make economic sense.

Regards,

Andrew

[joeyParticipant @joey]

Hi Paul, with simple turnig, actually some complicated parts such as telescopic sight mounting rings and Ferguson tractor depth control parts, can be done by chaining and edting the code generated by the Mach 3 Wizards. Be carefull though as some of them "forget" tocancel previously used code, to start or stop the motor and to ser the feed rates, however they are very usefull for a lathe.

Joey

(Measure and know)

[GoCreateParticipant @gocreate]

Hi

I am also interested in a lathe conversion and I am thinking of giving the cad to lathe software a try. The training videos are not great but it does appear to be very usable hobby work at a low price.

Nigel

[John Stevenson 1Participant @johnstevenson1]

Posted by tractionengine42 on 27/04/2013 23:39:51:

Hi

I am also interested in a lathe conversion and I am thinking of giving the cad to lathe software a try. The training videos are not great but it does appear to be very usable hobby work at a low price.

Nigel

I bought it and can't get any usable code out of it help was not very forthcoming.

[GoCreateParticipant @gocreate]

Posted by John Stevenson on 28/04/2013 01:38:04

I bought it and can't get any usable code out of it help was not very forthcoming.

John, thanks for your feed back, I will give it a miss then.

Paul,  we both appear to be in the same boat. From what I have looked at Dolphin turn is the only reasonably priced comprehensive lathe cam but for me still too expensive for hobby use.

I see Cambam, as suggested by Martin, has a lathe plug in for profile turning. For most jobs writing the g code should be easy enough to learn. I think this will be the way I will go, cambam + plug in for profiling and own gcode for everything else. I don't think mach 3 turn has wizards like the mill version does.

Like you I am also using Cut 2D for milling, maybe this could be used for generating gcode for a profile but then the gcode will need editing to adapt to turning. Hopfully others will comment on this.

Nigel

Edited By tractionengine42 on 28/04/2013 22:14:25

[John Stevenson 1Participant @johnstevenson1]

Mach 3 does have turn wizards and I use these a lot for simple stuff.

I do have Dolphin as well but to be honest I have only used it for one lathe job that had a complex profile.

Most of my work is either plain turning, tapers or a bit of threading which is all done by the wizards.

[GoCreateParticipant @gocreate]

John, Thanks again for your feedback that's great to know, I couldn't see any reference to the turn wizards on the Artsoft website or tutorial video.

Nigel

[John Stevenson 1Participant @johnstevenson1]

Open Mach Turn up and select wizards from the top menu.

Should be two, threading and turn wizards which expands into all the usual profiles.

[paul tomlinsonParticipant @paultomlinson71988]

Thanks to everyone for the replies, not sure which way to go at the moment. I've looked at the simple CAD to G code programmes, might be worth investigating a little more. I've also had a quick look at BobCAD, looks brilliant but might be a little complicated for me. The Wizads on Mach 3 look useful but I was hoping to do the g code all in one hit rather than using several routines.

Andrew, you are right! I am the Tormach owner, great machine! Tormach are taking their time with production of their lathe. Have you seen the cnc lathes (Sieg) imported by Axminster, they seem very affordable and might be my next purchase if I can get my head around this simple Syil lathe.

Thanks for all your advice, Paul

ps sorry for the late response but I just discovered all these replies were going in my junk box (don't you love computers!)

[simondavies3Participant @simondavies3]

Interesting to hear what everyone else is doing.

I purchased an Emco Compact 5PC late last year after several years building and then getting used to running a BF20 based mill.

For the mill I use CamBam which is brilliant, however I find the lathe part to be rather less friendly and useful than the mill. That said, I have done some complex profiles for making clock gear cutters using CamBam which were not practical with the Mach3 wizards nor simple enough for me to code directly.

Paul, I had the same idea as you initially but I have found so far that using separate wizards is actually quite practical for limited operations and I will save and merge several wizards together only if I am making multiple parts.

If anyone can propose a CAM that was designed from day 1 for a lather rather than most CAMs which seem to have been designed for a mill and subsequently twisted to support a lathe, I would be most interested

Simon

[John Stevenson 1Participant @johnstevenson1]

Posted by paul tomlinson on 29/04/2013 18:26:18: Have you seen the cnc lathes (Sieg) imported by Axminster, they seem very affordable and might be my next purchase if I can get my head around this simple Syil lathe.

Thanks for all your advice, Paul

Paul,

Don't bother. These are called KC4S and KC6S, the S on the end defines a Sieg controller which is a very basic controller made for the home Chinese market but it has an English screen.

There is no support for these outside of China nd they are very clunky.

Add to this the KC4 is powered by a 500W brushless DC motor but it's manual based machine, the C4 has a 1000W brushless fitted making this an underpowered pig.

The KC6 has a very high cross slide which means that the largest piece of material it can spin over the slide is about 50mm and the cross slide also has very short travels.

Basically neither of these two machins have had much thought put into them, probably why no one else carries them ?

Not a sour grapes post as I have a KC4 here, it's now much modified but still has limitations.

Lathes are the Cinderella of the CNC world, people think they are just a 2 axis mill wjhen in fact they are far more complex.

[joeyParticipant @joey]

Hi everybody,

Has anyone tried MCAM 9 yet?

[Anonymous]

Hi Paul,

I wonder if my last couple of emails went into your junk bin too?

I hadn't seen the CNC lathes from Axminster, although I've just had a quick look. They look ok, but seem quite expensive. I've just bought a repetition lathe, so any CNC lathe I'd be interested in would have to offer something over and above that. The previews I've seen from Tormach look very interesting, especially with the revolving tool carousel. I can't see any reason why it couldn't, in principle, be used for live tooling, which would be a big plus for me. It'll be interesting to see when it finally makes it to market, and how much!

Regards,

Andrew

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