[QuinnSjoblom]

Can you not do the axis swap and then use G18 (XZ), G19 (YZ) for arcs? You can swap the axes around in Fusion and basically assign any axis as a rotary axis. Many times I post different operations separately and merge the G code to do things that I would not normally be able to do, especially using live tooling in the lathe. Fusion can generate 5 axis tool paths.

This is kind of what we did here to make a couple of these parts, the CNC lathe was busy and we didn't want to do these on the manual lathe. I can't recall if we used turning or 3D milling for this operation.

If I get the swap axis to work, everything should work perfectly fine. No issues with arcs or drilling cycles. The complication with arcs and drilling is if I was to not do the swap axis and instead use a workaround of posting code and then using a word program to swap all x's and z's. Swap axis is definitely the way to go, it's just complicated on my machine because of the 2 ballscrews driving x with 2 motors using a slave axis. Pretty sure I have the simplest solution though, rather than trying to make some complicated slave axis dual swap macro, I will just parallel my 2 x stepper drivers to a single step/dir pin so I no longer need the slave. At that point it becomes just a regular simple swap axis for running programs with my horizontal sub spindle. At least the swap axis part is simple. Switching control between spindles is gonna be a whole different puzzle. Don't even know where to start for that.

Your video reminds me of an unrelated thought i had the other day. When posting code for turning, I believe we use Fanuc post for mach3 turning, aren't x moves in diameter mode? So the movements will be double what they should be when running it in a mill profile? Or am I getting mixed up somehow? I'm new to turning code, but when watching a tutorial, x values were entered as a diameter after taking a small cut to dial in the x zero for a tool. Or is diameter mode only used in that scenario of taking a cut and entering the measured diameter for x?

[Jim Dawson]

At least the swap axis part is simple. Switching control between spindles is gonna be a whole different puzzle. Don't even know where to start for that.

I use M133 (Run Forward), M134 (Run Reverse), M135 (Stop) for my live tooling. These are Haas live tool control M codes as I recall. I'm pretty sure Mach3 would support these codes with a macro. You just need to assign the aux spindle as an axis or maybe an aux spindle. Not totally sure how that works in Mach3, I have the live tooling as an axis on my lathe. So the line of G code would read: P2000 M133 (Run Forward at 2000 RPM)

[QuinnSjoblom]

I use M133 (Run Forward), M134 (Run Reverse), M135 (Stop) for my live tooling. These are Haas live tool control M codes as I recall. I'm pretty sure Mach3 would support these codes with a macro. You just need to assign the aux spindle as an axis or maybe an aux spindle. Not totally sure how that works in Mach3, I have the live tooling as an axis on my lathe. So the line of G code would read: P2000 M133 (Run Forward at 2000 RPM)

Very interesting. I'm not sure mach3 supports that. It seems to be pretty limited with solutions for running a secondary spindle. I've seen a few posts by guys that wanted to run secondary spindles and it seemed pretty complicated. I'm pretty sure there's no actual option for an aux spindle and if setting up as an actual axis, there's no way to command it to spin continuously as other code continues. With the examples i saw, the second spindle had to be controlled in place of the main spindle, still using regular sxxx m3,m4. Some have used a macro to control relays that disables one spindle and enables the other. I would definately say mach3 wasn't designed with multiples spindles in mind. From what I understand, mach4 opens up more possibilities and seems to have better support for multiple spindles. I need to do more research and if I decide it's worth it, I'll upgrade to mach4.

I'm pretty sure there are ways to make it happen in mach3 without having to dig through every gcode file and manually add in the needed m codes in proper places. One approach is using the tool change macro. Have 2 sets of duplicate tools in cam library, 1-99 with duplicates of 101-199. Example would be tool 1 goes in main spindle, tool 101 is same tool in secondary spindle. Tool change macro can be written so if tool number is greater than 100, run macro for spindle control swap. In my case, the axis swap would follow this same logic. I have an understanding of how the logic needs to work to make things like this happen, but I don't know the language at all, soni have a lot to learn before I would be able to write macros like this