What is everyone using for TURN at present? Mach3, Mach4??

[Robertspark]

I know this may be controversial, but I also know that there are a number of knowledgeable people who frequent this forum and I really like my UC motion controllers...

Given UCCNC does not support turning applications without attempting to hack it, those that have lathes, what gcode interpreter are you running? Mach3, Mach4 ?? {what other alternative that LinuxCNC are there for turning applications in a mill flooded cnc world}?

With regards to Mach3 and mach4, what do the UC motion controllers offer by way of synchronous motion? {if I used Mach4.... would it operate with an encoder, or are we back to single pulse per rev as per mach3 for attempting spindle sync?}

[cncdrive]

We advice to not to use the UCCNC on lathes, because several lathe functions are missing for comfortable lathe usage.
With Mach3 the syncronous thread cutting is working, but there are a few bugs in Mach3 about the thread cutting which can cause issues with some type of thread cutting codes. (I can't remember at the moment which are the cases.)
With Mach4 the UC controllers can't cut threads. We have tried to implement thread cutting some time ago, but found out that it did not work at all on the Mach4 side, so we gave up on it.
Later it was reported to be fixed, but we could not find the time yet to make another try.
With the UCCNC the syncronous thread cutting works perfectly, but again there are missing lathe functions...

[ger21]

Would it not be better to spin off a separate turn product, rather than a one size fits all approach? That would seem to lower the complexity of both UCCNC and a UCCNC Lathe program.

[cncdrive]

Gerry,

It is a good question.
My thought now is that if we make a separate software for lathe that would really make both softwares simpler, but the same time it would be harder to maintain 2 separate softwares.
So, I see both advantage and disadvantage in making 2 separate softwares.

[Robertspark]

I guess the advantage of two products is additional licence fee potential (I'd pay it.... I don't want yet another motion controller....)

I've thought about swapping axis about so it's akin to a vertical mill.... That way threading should work ok
.....
Feed per revolution / surface speed correction doesn't though without the hack in attempted...

I guess you could use the underlying code and just enable mill / router / plasma with one licence, and turn / rotary axis with another licence code

I've been looking at PMDX-414 for a mach4 lathe compatible (spindle sync/ encoder input) (i still have my mach4 licence so it's just the motion controller cost)

I like the availability of the turn wizards in mach4

I looked at the centroid acorn.... The glitch i saw was the required minimum pc specification ..... Single core performance of 1500 and greater. https://www.cpubenchmark.net/singleThread.html ... For me that would mean another pc upgrade.... Plus motion controller... Plus lathe Pro software....plus another learning curve...

Linux CNC lathe lacks the wizards.... hence not going that way for the moment, but it have a working RT linux + linuxcnc setup so that would be another option

I wonder what it would take to get uc300+400 motion controllers mach4 plugin with spindle sync encoder input?

Admittedly... I need to finish off the mechanical conversion first of my lathe which is am going to try again at making a concerted effort to finish before motion controllers are required and decisions must be made....

[Derek]

I'm using mach3 and pport with single input threading. It works but I would love to have encoder threading.

For me it always comes back to tool offsets. There is no way I can run my lathe with only Z offset.

[GaryLa]

I have been using LinuxCNC for lathe work for several years.

Although I have tweaked the source code a few times.

[solarlab]

New to forum and UCCNC ...

Machines: Sieg KX3 Mill and KC6 Lathe plus Sherline 4400 Lathe and 2000 Mill; all CNC with 4th Axis
rotary tables.

Using Sieg CNC Pro MIll and Turn (KC6 had a firmware problem with G76, simulation OK, Lathe was
a no-go - just stopped - returned controller to China for update - haven't tested it since receiving update
[4 or 5 years ago] - contracted lathe work out ever since. Sieg programs use ethernet connection - OK!

Using Mach3 for Sherline Mill and Lathe with USB Smoothstepper - USB noisy but OK!

Moved lab several years ago and I'm just now trying to set things up again - designing some advanced
energy concepts - so far, very interesting.

Short term goal - design a "Coil Winder" {with screenset and internal calculator, if viable}.
These coils are large, approx. 240mm length by 60mm diameter; thus -

Looking at using UCCNC with ethernet controller, screeset, etc..

Currently using coil fabrication G-code from a simple Windows7 program (Gcoil 1.4 part of Gsuite v 1.1).

Would be nice to referb all these machines with UCCNC - with various Profiles/Screesets, hardware networked!

SL