Newbie- X and Y Axis designation

[kheri]

Which one is designated as X axis and which one is the Y Axis in a CNC machine ? Is it interchangeable ?

[ger21]

X is typically the longer of the two, but you can set it up any way you want.

[Senna]

I asked the same question not too long ago and the response was the same as ger21 gave. BUT... if you use Mach3 it designates the axis that moves fore & aft as the Y and the axis that travels left & right as the X as viewed while standing at the front of the machine.

Senna

[ger21]

Mach3 uses a right hand Cartesian coordinate system. Which matches just about all CAD programs out there. It's generally a good idea to have the machine match your CAD program, so parts get cut in the same orientation as you draw them.

[Arquibaldo]

Senna says:

"...designates the axis that moves fore & aft as the Y and the axis that travels left & right as the X as viewed while standing at the front of the machine."

This is perfectly OK, as we all learned in high school... The problem is: What is the front
of the machine? On a lathe or a mill this seems obvious to me, but on a CNC router,
opinions may vary; I think that I am at the front when the Z axis (no question here: this is
the axis parallel to the tool rotation axis) travels from left to right, so that the table (on a
moving table machine) or the gantry (on a moving gantry machine) moves along the Y axis (ie: towards me or away from me), but most people don't seem to think this way...

Nelson

[CarveOne]

Originally Posted by Arquibaldo Senna says: "...designates the axis that moves fore & aft as the Y and the axis that travels left & right as the X as viewed while standing at the front of the machine." This is perfectly OK, as we all learned in high school... The problem is: What is the front of the machine? On a lathe or a mill this seems obvious to me, but on a CNC router, opinions may vary; I think that I am at the front when the Z axis (no question here: this is the axis parallel to the tool rotation axis) travels from left to right, so that the table (on a moving table machine) or the gantry (on a moving gantry machine) moves along the Y axis (ie: towards me or away from me), but most people don't seem to think this way... Nelson

The "front" of the machine is designated by the user in software and can be either the long horizontal axis or the shorter horizontal axis. Most popular rectangular machines are designated by the user as X (the table) being the long axis and Y (the gantry) being the shorter horizontal axis. Z is usually designated as the vertical axis (router).

The so called "wide routers" have the gantry across the longer dimension of the table and the Y as the narrower dimension of the table.

The user has the option of setting up the software in any configuration that they wish to for special purpose CNC machines. As Gerry mentions, it helps the user if the machine is set up to correspond visually with what they see in the CAD software, especially with the solid models. There are less mental gyrations needed by the user when the user is testing the gcode for a 2.5D object that is to be cut.

It all boils down to setting the software up so that it makes sense to you, but if you get gcode from some other source it may move in ways that you don't expect. In that case, you will need to modify the gcode to work correctly with your own machine setup. It's all part of the "fun" of working with CNC control.

CarveOne

[kheri]

Thank you to all you guys for clarifying my inquiry.