4th axis with multiple wcs

[mburke]

So I am trying to machine a squarish casting to drill holes on 4 sides.  I am mounting the casting on the 4th axis and planned to drill holes that must align with holes on the other sides.  I thought I would make one setup for each side with the wcs zeroed at the appropriate edge of the casting to align with the opposing and adjacent sides.  Therefore, each side of the casting has a unique wcs.  I specified the wcs in each setup as 1,2,3,4 to get the wcs to 54,55,56,57 in the NC program.  

I then set the appropriate G54-57 wcs on the machine.  When I run the program, the a-axis rotates as expected, but the y-axis and z-axis do not seem correct.  The machine shows the active wcs changing as expected.  Any help in this area?  I am using the Tormach PCNC 1100.

[LibertyMachine]

The only way to do this in Fusion is multiple Setups. It's not pretty. When I get back from a customer visit I will try to link you to a thread I had made some time ago. Long story short, I had a post modified to give me mostly what I needed

[mburke]

So do I understand that the center of rotation has to be at the center of the part (or at least the same point) for each side of my part?  It would be much more accurate hole alignments if I can reference the same adjacent face to locate holes across from each other.  My part is a rectangle so the z-axis zero has to change anyway.  This would also decrease the need to center a rectangle part on the 4th axis of rotation.

[mburke]

Ok. I figured out what I was doing wrong.  I had 4 setups, one for each side.  Each wcs for the setups I was placing with the xy plane oriented at the 4th axis 0 degree.  Then for each tool operation I set the "tool orientation" wcs xy plane to the face of the part and the origin to my desired corner of the block.

My mistake was that I put the origin of the setups at the rotation center of the 4th axis.  For some reason, this messed up the origin of the tool orientation wcs's.

To fix it, I had to make the Setup wcs origin the same as the "tool orientation" wcs's.  Just make the xy plane rotated with respect to the Setup wcs for each of the four setups.

Hope this helps someone else.