[twin2turbo87]

I have my fourth axis and haven't found out how to plug it into machining my cylindrical parts. Can you help me with this?

Also I've ran a couple programs from bobcad so far. V26. How do I add in a manual tool change? I guess I need a tool holder that will have the same length for the tools I'm using everytime... Right now its all single m2t collets. Thanks for any help. I'm running with Mach3 of course.

[mmoe]

For the tool change, you need to configure Mach 3 to stop and wait between tools, so that's not really something you change in Bobcad. Go to the "Config" menu in Mach 3, then the "General Config..." sub-menu, which will bring up the General Configuration window. In the upper left corner you will see an option to stop the spindle and wait for the Cycle Start to be pressed when a tool change is called out. During the operation of the program, you would change the bit when the spindle stops, then you have to re-zero the bit before pressing cycle start either by an auto tool height macro (you can type in M codes while the program is paused) or by manually measuring the tool length and setting Z to "0" at the correct height.

In Bobcad, you should be using a post processor with a toolchange (M06 T--). Other than that, there really isn't anything specific on Bobcad's side that you need to do for the toolchange to work. I'm not familiar with the 4th axis functions of Bobcad, so someone else will have to help you out there.

[twin2turbo87]

Thanks man