Help with Mach3 and 4th axis machining

[Carbuilder]

Now that is really impressive work! And I thought making a cam was cool.

I really hadn't done much 4th axis work, but now that I've (hopefully) got it sorted out I should be using it more.

 

[around]

I also made an adapter that fits into the taper on the rotary table and has the same threads as my lathe spindle (Boxford AUD II). Allows me to mount my lathe chuck on the mill 4th axis. Very helpful in keeping concentricity when shifting to milling features.

Cheers,

Adrian

 

[Carbuilder]

Here is something from Lex at DeskProto on that setting of radius in Mach3:

About Mach3 needing the radius of the part for its speed calculation I may be able to shed some light:
The feedrate as set in the G-code is a linear feedrate (mm/sec, inch/min, etc). It is easy to calculate the speeds for X, Y and Z to achieve this prescribed feedrate, however not for A: the further away the cutter is from the rotation axis, the lower A-speed is needed. Many controllers can't do this calculation, and some controllers solve this by asking the user to enter a radius, in order to simply use that value as distance to the rotation axis.
As DeskProto uses inverse time feedrate this setting does not apply to the G-code from DeskProto.