Programming Lathe Work in Powermill

[Anonymous]

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.

[dans4DQYP · Accepted solution]

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 

[Anonymous]

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.

[Michaelangelo631]

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.