Multi-sided machining with VM5 Pro

[rzmac]

I am wondering if anybody can shed some light on the best way to do multi-sided maching with VM5 Pro? My parts are pretty simple, need to be machined (2.5axis) on the top and bottom (for starters) and will not fit in my 4th axis.

Originally I thought I would just do a 'fake' 4th axis rotation and then adjust the MCS? Is this the right way to do it? It feels wrong, is inconvenient and does not correspond to the VM6 video on the mecsoft site. I do not really want to define the origin at the mid-Z level as the first facing operation will mess up the generated Z-levels for the opposite side. Simple example follows:

Op1 - face top of part - works fine
Op2 - rotate 180 CCW around x-axis - works fine
Op3 - Set MCS - works fine
Op4 - face bottom of part - problem! part is held in vice and did not really rotate about a 4th axis. As a result, the Z-height offset is incorrect based on the fact that the oal of the part is now shorter due to Op1.

The documentation in this area seems to be a little thin? Any help or ideas would be greatly appreciated. I am guessing it is simple to do, but I am either too tired, too old or too dense to see how?


thanks,


steve

[rzmac]

It turns out that the correct procedure involves using the 'Rotate' function in a manner similar to that shown for VM6 on the mecsoft website! For anybody who is interested, the Rotate function can be found under the Edit -> Rotate menu-path.