Update for anyone following along. After getting this working, I was able to use the lathe to make some pretty killer titanium fountain pens. (you can see them on OCTODYNE)

But I moved shops, and let the batteries die, or some such thing, so I had to re-recomission the machine. Using my previous notes, it was kind of no big deal!

I'd sort of stopped using this lathe because it's such a headache to go from bobcam to gcode with all the handwritten lines that need to be added. however, Fusion 360 solves a lot of the issues. however, there's not a perfect post processor for the 810T control, so I've had to modify a generic one. For now, here's where I"m at:


+I've completely ditched bobcad/cam in favor of Fusion 360 (good riddance!)

+Using the generic siemens post processor, I've gotten working code to post. But I had to make some post mods:

+modified it to get the D values to work properly with each T value basically T(#)=D(#)

+ditched the code for safe home values: the thing I've figured out about my machine is that the 0,0 position is actually inside the spindle of the machine! And the point at which it's calculated from is the FACE of the turret. So you have to set a Tool Number and D offset for each tool. But a "home position" of X0 Z0 would crash the tool into the spindle. For some completely strange reason, setting the home position to x3.8, z7.8 (which is the tool turret fully retracted with offsets removed) does not work. Fusion multiplies these values by 24.5 to convert them to MM, and the X value is then doubled. I couldn't figure out how to make it work, so nuked the whole line.

+changed the syntax of adding notes so that they're enclosed in parentheses ( )

+changed the program to the proper %MPF 1001 format

+changed the speed limitation from "LIMS 5000" to something my lathe recognizes "G92 5000"

+various other small fixes.



Still working on a G97/G95 issue. For some reason Fusion always seems to add 97 to my code, but unless I change it toG95, the spindle turns at less than 1RPM.



Also Still working on the proper way to do tool changes to make sure that the turret does not rotate into the work.

For external tools, it should be retract X to safe position, retract Z to safe, then tool change.
For internal (drills, boring, etc) it should be retract Z to safe, then retract x to safe, then tool change
This is straightforward from a logic perspective, but I have not figured out the code yet.
I'm not a programmer, so this is all going very slowly for me. I feel the comment above about just hiring someone to write a post, but I don't use the machine enough... frankly, if it were to break, I think it would be a good candidate for a control retrofit, so it's hard to justify throwing money at writing a custom post at something that's so obviously obsolete.