[Steve Seebold]

Is the Rapid Turn compatible with Mach III?

[sharmstr]

"Will RapidTurn™ work with Mach3?No. You must have our PathPilot® control system installed to use RapidTurn™. Click here to learn how to upgrade to PathPilot."

[kstrauss]

That isn't quite true. RapidTurn can probably be made to work with Mach3 if you are willing/able to do all of the required Mach3 configuration on your own. However, it is not supported in any fashion by Tormach using Mach3.

Just upgrade to PathPilot; you'll love it!

[TurboStep]

Just upgrade to PathPilot; you'll love it!

Steve is not interested in upgrading unless it breaks first

My 1100 is 6 years old and I'm still running Mach III. I have read too many horror stories from guys who switched to Path Pilot too early.

I am a firm believer in "IF IT AINT BROKE, DINT FIX IT".

Step

[brian257]

I got a new hard drive for my controller and put Pathpilot on it. Could have put the Mach drive back in if it didn't work good, but all is fine and I don't see ever going back. Plan to do PP on my Bridgeport now also with a Mesa card. Half the reason I bought the Tormach is because the Bridgeport has never been reliable with M3 and ethernet Smoothstepper and I am tired of ruing parts and breaking expensive end mills when it decides to just run off for no reason.

[Roadstercycle]

"[FONT="]Will RapidTurn™ work with Mach3?[/FONT]No. You must have our PathPilot® control system installed to use RapidTurn™. Click here to learn how to upgrade to PathPilot."

In my situation Mach 3 does work with Rapid turn. I'm running a Rapid turn on a Charter Oaks mill that I CNC'd. I'm running the Rapid turn on a separate VFD so I can run the Rapid turn and the spindle at the same time thus able to do grinding. You just have to take time to wrap your head around X axis being the Z axis with rapid turn and the Z axis being the X axis. Cut a lot of air first until you get it down. I was able to hook up the stock Rapid turn RPM pickup in mach 3 with a 1.5K resistor across the power (white wire) and blue (signal). Works great. I did check and it does work in Mach to cut threads. On a side note I also installed a stepper set up to be able to index so I could cut splines. The stepper is on the opposite side of the motor with almost an identical bracket. You just swap the belt for turning or indexing. It's a multi groove belt so there's no big worry about slipping unless you take big cuts or do something stupid. A timing belt setup would be best for sure and when I do that I'll make a motor pulley too so the main motor and stepper will still drive off the same belt by swapping. You don't want to have both motors engaged because the stepper will be over driven about 6 to 1 if the main motor is running 2000 RPMs and the stepper would turn at 12,000 RPMs. Yikes. I may also design a brake for it in the indexing mode.
That's later after my Skyfire VMC gets here in a few weeks.