My First Piece.

Its not anything elaborate, just two rows of eight holes, 0.780" dia. on some scrap 6061 I had. This was my first piece made on the Tormach. Since I haven't a CAM program and can't even figure out how to use my old Turbo Cad, I manually coded the thing and it ran without a hitch. The tool is a four flute .500" HSS, no coolant (I don't have the coolant fluid yet.). The program is in two parts. The first part is run in G90 mode and indicates the location for the center of each hole. After each center location is designated, the program calls the second part which is a subprogram that is run in G91 mode, uses G42 compensation and G2/Z for helical interpolation. After completing each hole, mode is changed back to G90 and control is returned to the next sequential instruction in the main program.

I was pleased that G42 and G2/Z worked without issues. At each hole, I gave G2 a 0.390" lead in while bringing the Z to just meet the surface. Feed was 42 and RPM at 4800. Each half turn of the G2 included Z-0.065

I'm sure there are better ways to have done it, but it worked flawlessly. And as the old saw goes, "any landing you can walk away from is a good landing."

The part will be a holder for my TTS tools. With 2" between centers, the Tormach's X travel limited me to eight holes. The size of my stock limited me to just two rows. In all, 16 holes with 0.780" dia. Maybe I should've gone with a dia of 0.760" or so. The 0.780" is a little sloppy.

John