Lube Groove

[goulyd]

Looking for a way to produce these oil grooves on attached sketch with Gibbscam on a CNC lathe. I have available standard 2 axis machines and Mori Seiki and Okuma MTM machines with "C" and "Y" axis and swiveling mill heads. I am not sure whether this shape can be cut without a circular start groove. Maybe they will have to be milled, but I don't have an angle head attachment that would reach into bore.
Any feedback would be appreciated

[rhundl]

Thats a tuff one. have you tried to maybe hand program it with a g32 cycle. That would be the only thing i could think of for a lathe. if you have solids or advanced cs you may be able to do it with 3d dimensional geometry. But i think this would be posible in a lathe. somehow... i will toy with a machine in the morning and see if I can come up with something

[goulyd]

I ended up using an internal lathe grooving tool and in milling mode moved the tool to the start position using an incremental program that rotated "C" axis 180 degrees while moving "Z" minus and "X" plus .002 -.003". I then move "C" another 180 while moving "Z" plus and leaving "X" at depth to get back to "C" and "Z" start position. If taper is not allowed on the intial pass I would make one more pass leaving "X" at depth and moving "C" and "Z".
To get to the correct depth I just repeat it as many times as required.

Then in absloute mode rotate "C" to the other 3 groove start positions and call the sub as needed to get the required number of grooves to suit.