topic Programming Lathe Work in Powermill in PowerMill Forum

Programming Lathe Work in Powermill

Anonymous — Thu, 11 Oct 2018 18:16:22 GMT

I'm starting to do some investigation about programming a lathe with Y axis tooling.

For the sake of exploration I am going to pretend that the prefered lathe is going to be a HAAS ST-30

Do you program for your lathe in Powermill? If so how is it treating you.

How was post-configuration/general setup?

How is the crash detection/simulation?

If you're using live tooling, in what context?

Are you doing sub-spindle transfer style machining? Robot intergration?

My understanding is that the lathe-specific paths are all based on features; How has that worked out?

I figured I'd reach out to the community to see who has some experience integrating this in PowerMill rather than using a feature-cam add on or other additional software.

Re: Programming Lathe Work in Powermill

dans4DQYP — Fri, 12 Oct 2018 14:54:15 GMT

I have programming our Haas st-20 for about 1 1/2 - 2years now Its goin alright The only thing is we program threads at the controller otherwise all is done in Powermill I wrote my own post . Powermill is very basic for

turning . But it works ok for us I am hoping Autodesk will expand on Powermill capabilities. We donot have

Y axis on our lathe . Collision checking and simulation could use some help . Yep you need to create features.

I have created a number of enhancement cases to Autodesk Have not heard back on any of them.

The last Rev Powermill added Pattern turning which helped. I don't believe

that there are many Powermill Users using the turning portion. so support from others users is limited .

Good luck

Re: Programming Lathe Work in Powermill

Anonymous — Fri, 12 Oct 2018 15:54:35 GMT

From asking around that seems to be the case.

I don't think the Y axis style tools are supported at all so that's unfortunate but good to know anyway.

I may have to look more at mill-turn style machines which doesn't really break my heart as much as my wallet.

Re: Programming Lathe Work in Powermill

Michaelangelo631 — Mon, 15 Oct 2018 11:05:58 GMT

I have also used powermill to program my 2 axis Okuma Lathe. The majority of the programming is done at the control using the okuma conversational programming package. However there are certain times where I need a very custom approach and powermill has served me well in this regard. Having these features in powermill has been very useful and I am glad they continue to develop them further. We are also getting into 5 axis now and will eventually look into applying the turn toolpaths on that machine as well.