tangental knife

[Battwell]

does uccnc support tangental knife?
if so in arcs?
had a query from uk potential customer

[dezsoe]

IMHO, it depend on only the CAM postprocessor. You may assign it to a free axis (e.g. A). It can use the Z axis to go up and down, or if it has a solenoid to push down (or lift up) the blade, it can be driven by the laser output pin. (No PWM, just M10/M11.) It's only my private opinion: in fact, I don't know if the control software has to turn the blade or the CAM will do it.

[cncdrive]

It does not support automatic tangential knife control like in Mach3 if the question was about that.
However the tangential knife control in Mach3 is pretty buggy, so I think it is still much better if you get a post processor in a CAM software which supports tangential knife control and then output the code like that.
I mean that the CAM software could put the knife control as e.g. 4th axis.
I think SheetCAM for example has a tangential knife module....

[Battwell]

thanks for the explanation
when is the analogue servo capable board going to be ready for me to test