[bishb25]

Hi all,

I am cutting vent grooves axially along the profile of a turned mold core using my SL-10 lathe. The grooves are evenly spaced radially around the core. The motion is a lot like broaching with a single point tool in G98 mode. I'm using an M97 subroutine to hold the profile tool path and using M19 Pnn to index the spindle to the next groove location.

What I would like to do is find a way to use a looping function to incrementally offset the grooving tool in a few thou in X over multiple passes for each groove without having to write individual profiles.

For example:
On the first groove I could call M97 P10 L3.
Then the tool would run the first pass at the programmed diameter, but on the second pass the the tool would increment down .003" in X and so on. Then after all loops/passes are complete the tool would reset to the original location and then I could index the spindle to the next groove location and do it again.

Does anyone know of a way to do this without writing a mile of repetitious code? Oh, and I don't have the MACRO option either.

I hope I explained the situation well enough.

Thanks for looking.

[KenFoulks]

Use U instead of X and W instead of Z, those will do incremental moves. You can also use the spindle brake (M14) if you have one. This code will broach 3 slots, 60 degrees apart:

G00 G54 X0. Z0.
M19 P0
M97 P10 L10
G00 G54 X0. Z0.
M19 P120
M97 P10 L10
G00 G54 X0. Z0.
M19 P240
M97 P10 L10
G28
M30

N10 G00
M19
N10 G01 U-.013 F.01
W-1.
G00 U.01
W1.
M99

[bishb25]

Thanks Ken,

I knew the solution would be simple, but with all the projects going on I just wasn't able to wrap my head around it.

Thanks again for the help.

[florida]

Nice work Ken, seems too simple.