I have been looking at the gcode produced by the gadget. If you plot out the G1 commands for x and y you will see that the program is not running a radial as requested but a raster. The other option. when requesting 12 inch length or 304.8 mm it moves back and forth between 0.0 and 119.659 stepping with y increasing by 2.561 mm until it gets to the 304.8 mm. Which is correct. There seems to be two problems 1) the raster instead of the radial 2) the computation of the circumference. The two problems may be related. I am not sure where to go from here if you agree with the above. Thanks in advance for all your help if you put the code from the gadget into control simulation you can easily see it is running raster. John
I noticed that one set of gadget code I have for radial is different from others. I will have to check it out.
The theory is simple. Steps per mm (as its old grbl, unit ignored steps per mm works as steps per deg) set to 444 should give you matching theoretical and actual move (telling it to move 360deg(as mm) should move 360-deg in real life In Vectric you just tell it the dimensions of the cylinder in the chuck, and it (along with the Post Giarc uses) does the math from there for you. Rotary Machining and Wrapping
"Plunging" not "plugging." I tried creating a project in Vcarve that would be wrapped . However, when I chose a V bit, it would try to carve all the way to the center of the piece rather than the 2mm depth I chose. However, if I pocket out the letters, it works. I was unable to figure out why that was the case. I had to give up for now because I have other more pressing work I need to do. Also, this post may help you. It shows the process of how I use Vcarve with the Rotary Demon Post Processor: LEAD Lathe
I wonder if it would be as easy as just changing ROTARY_WRAP_Y = "yes" to ROTARY_WRAP_X = "yes" in the quoted text above. Or if there would have to be adjustments in these areas further down in the Post Processor files. If I get time this week, I may try to do this by just switching the X and Y plugs on my Black box. Unless you want to give it a shot. Just rename the Post-Processor Rotary DEMON - WRAP X.
If Vectric gets too tricky for you, can also look into DeskProto offers CNC machining for non-machinists - their rotary is a little easier to setup. At least with the BlackBox X32, haven't tried faking it on a 3-axes controller (upgrade might also be good, no workarounds needed if you have a proper 4-axes controller) Create rotary toolpaths to machine a Venus sculpture
