horizontal spindle

[endgrainguy]

I"m building a CNC router for woodworking, joinery and inlay. For the joinery work, dovetails of all kinds and mortise and tenon, the spindle will be oriented horizontally to the work table, so i can work on longer pieces, and simplify clamping. This means that if I draw a part the usual way in a CAD program, my z and Y axises are reversed. How do I deal with this? Is the easiest way to just manually swith the x's and Y's in the generated code (paying attention to the positive and negative issues I'd have with the Z axis)? Or is there an easier way that this absolute CNC neophyte is missing? Can I define two diffeeent machines in Mach3, one with spindle horizontal for the joinery work, one with vertical spindle for conventional work? I"ll be using MAch 3 with either sheetcam or Lazycam as CAM program. Thanks! See my work at www.alladd.com

[ger21]

Originally Posted by endgrainguy Can I define two diffeeent machines in Mach3, one with spindle horizontal for the joinery work, one with vertical spindle for conventional work?

Yes, just set up two different profiles. That's probably the easiest way to go about it, although the CAM part may be a bit tricky. If I understand you , you're going to have to draw your parts as if looking at them from the side?

[endgrainguy]

The way people who do this sort of work with a CNC typically do it is to clamp the work vertically. Then their working surface is just the end grain, cross sectional surface at the end of the board and they can draw the part and process CAD/CAM process in the usual way. But this limits the length of the board one can machine, and creates the need for an awkward clamping (fighting gravity) and registration issue (and I want to do lots of these so quick material handling is important). I can't see how I can tell MAch3 my Y axis is my Z axis, and visa versa, for situations where the spindle is tilted to horizontal, and I think this is what I need to do -or alternatively, swap my Y's and Z's in every snippet of code. I suppose some programmer could write a program to do that in about two minutes, but I'm really not a computer guy. The code for these joinery cuts will be fairly simple, though many of the cuts will involve cleanup passes for best accuracy.

[ger21]

Originally Posted by endgrainguy I can't see how I can tell MAch3 my Y axis is my Z axis, and visa versa, for situations where the spindle is tilted to horizontal, and I think this is what I need to do

Set up Mach3 for normal use. Then, create a new profile, ans assign the Z axis pins to the Y axis, and the Y axis pins to the Z axis. Then, you'll have two different Mach3 options too choose from, which act like two different machines.