here is a video of cradeks machine running a 5 axis tool path. This was at the cnc workshop. They purposely offset the block from center so you could see all the axis are moving (xyz and rotorys)

YouTube - 5-axis milling demo with EMC2

this is a ray trace of the same thing

YouTube - EMC2 5-axis milling simulation

sam

That's one FANTASTIC machine!

CR.

I am loving that! Of course that piece could be made on a lathe much more efficiently and faster. Still a great demo of the machine's capabilities though. :D

here is another one just in :)

YouTube - 5-Axis CNC Mill @ Hogeschool Antwerpen

trunnion machine :)

(I love emc2)

nice,very good

pretty wild stuff

That is excellent!

I didn't quite realise that in 5-axis mode EMC takes care of all the X,Y and Z transformations, so that the tool distance remains constant but the tool angle changes relative to the stock - it does make a lot of sense though!

How do you measure/specify the position of the stock on the rotary table so that EMC knows where it is if it's not centred on the rotary table's axis?

It isn't as much a mode as it is kinematics. Think of it as a formula describing the machine that translates the actual machine motion (joints, slides and such) to cartesian and back.... (if that made sense)

http://wiki.linuxcnc.org/cgi-bin/emcinfo.pl?Kinematics



That is excellent!

I didn't quite realise that in 5-axis mode EMC takes care of all the X,Y and Z transformations, so that the tool distance remains constant but the tool angle changes relative to the stock - it does make a lot of sense though!

How do you measure/specify the position of the stock on the rotary table so that EMC knows where it is if it's not centred on the rotary table's axis?

It isn't as much a mode as it is kinematics. Think of it as a formula describing the machine that translates the actual machine motion (joints, slides and such) to cartesian and back.... (if that made sense)

http://wiki.linuxcnc.org/cgi-bin/emcinfo.pl?Kinematics

I think I get that bit - I'm just wondering what sort of a machine description you need such that by specifying the X,Y and Z position of the top, front left corner of the stock with A and B at zero-degrees the machine knows that rotations about the B axis (the one in the table) move the part in X and Y as well as rotating it.

Thinking about it though, I suppose that given that the machine knows the X-Y position of the table in machine coords, you must just have to specify the X-Y position of the rotary table's axis and then the knowing that the stock is on the rotary table, you can work out where it is relative to the axis of rotation!

I had always assumed that you'd have to faff about with indicating your stock centrally on the rotary axes, but clearly you just need to have a datum point and let the software worry about it, just as with a simple 3-axis linear/orthogonal setup :)

How was that raytrace generated from the tool-path? One thing I can't seem to find is a free 4-5 axis toolpath generator - I've seen the 3D machine simulations on You-Tube, but I can't seem to find out how they were generated. I'd imagine that it takes a lot of simulation to get 5-axis paths correct, and to avoid interesting crashes!

Is the G-code for that part available?
May be post it or a link in this thread to give people an idea what it takes to do that kind of machining.