Centroid Community CNC Support Forum

Finally dusting off my long-abandoned lathe conversion, and downloaded the offline demo to practice setting up simple parts in Conversational.

Forgive me if this sounds like a stupid question, but my lathe is a converted manual, with the tool in front. The Demo defaults to the tool in back, as with a turret. So my questions are first, is there a way to switch that to the tool at the front? (I can't seem to change that in the tool library.) And second, does it matter?

I'm hoping to be able to code and graph a part here on the office computer, then sneakernet it over to the CNC machine on a USB drive. (Poor network connection out in the shop. I'm working on it. )

I haven't yet tried such a thing (just downloaded the demo package last night) so I just wanted to double-check.

Doc.

Set Parameter #1 = 1 for a lathe with the toolpost in front.

On the actual machine, you will want Parameter 1 = 3, so that in addition to showing tools in front (X+ down), it will also swap the functions of the X+ and X- jog buttons. That doesn't make any difference on the demo, of course.

Note that things like CW vs. CCW for arcs, and right vs. left for cutter compensation, are judged looking at the first quadrant (as if tools are in back and X+ is up) regardless of where your tool post is actually located.