It’s just an idea. The size this machine would be the servo system would have no trouble dealing with the inercial forces. This is no different than a vertical mills table with a rotary table A axis mounted on it. I think you may be referring to the X and Z axis. The vertical axis in this design is the Y axis with the B rotary axis. The C axis is the turning spindle axis. Only the rotary axis would have gyroscopic forces on them. But they rotate slowly. Now the turning spindle does rotate at high speed. But you only generate gyroscopic forces if you tip the axis of a gyroscope. This machine movement parallel and perpendicular to the rotating spindle. Swiss type screw machines move their turning spindles in a similar way to this. And they have no problem holding close tolerances. But as I said it just a idea I was thinking about. Thanks I appreciate your comment.

Yeah, they tend to be of custom construction and they are always quite bulky. What would be more achievable is just a nice solid and repeatable spindle lock, and if you use toolholders that index repeatably too then you can use turning tools in a pre-set orientation, it's just not adjustable.

Yes it could be configured as a tool and cutter grinder.

My Mazak has a worm driven C axis. It engages by first orienting the tuning spindle, while bringing the C axis worm to it's zero position. Then the worm and it's servo drive are mounted on a pivoting arm that is tipped into the worm gear to a precise stop to control the backlash by a hydraulic cylinder. This work fine but it takes time to do it, and its rapid rate is slow. I think on a small machine like this it may be possible to just belt drive a precision servo drive with a high resolution encoder to do the C axis. Then use some kind of curvic coupling to engage and disengage it, for turning. The B axis on my Mazak is driven by a roller cam drive. The B axis only rotates about 240 degrees total so this could be done in several different simpler ways. A belt drive may also work. Or actual apposing steel bands wrapped around cylinders or driven by a linear slide and ball screw. Worm drives are slow and wear. The Mazak has a special lube system just for the C axis worm drive.

@@EdgePrecision I think belts have kinda poor properties for directly driving the C axis, even the steel core ones are a bit elastic and wear unevenly under load compared to other transmissions, only really good for transmission from a motor to some other transmission if you want precision and stiffness. Might be good enough for the B axis though if the wheel radius is very large. If it's good enough for the Mazak then I think you could get a worm drive to work well on the C axis, maybe with a higher gearing, pneumatic cylinder if you don't want hydraulics, and using the spindle drive to rough position the shaft with pulses, then a little pneumatic cylinder that pushes a bar against a flat on the shaft to quickly bring it into proper alignment, maybe 5sec max for the process? If you have the worm swing up from below then the lubrication could just be a sump that the worm sits in without the gear touching the surface when it spins on it's own, easy separate lube system.

I think this design lets you get around a lot of the problems you normally have with a rotary axis, since you just have so much room to have the bearings far apart and have a huge worm drive gear under the table if you want. I like the ballscrew tilt idea though, it would limit you to only a bit past 90deg of accurate movement but it is rather rare to want the spindle angled that way anyhow.

It's more the machines control that needs the ability to position the tool correctly. There are quite a few Cam software's that can process the code, given the machines configuration. My Esprit software can. I thing even Fusion could do it as well. Its just a normal 5 axis configuration. Just because the whole lathe bed is moving doesn't really change anything as far as the tools movement is concerned. It may be more confusing to us, but for the control it makes no difference.

There is a slide on the top of the Y axis that will act like a quill. It could be configured to operate with a lever/handle like a Bridgeport quill. Depending on how the spindle is driven would depend on if the motor was on the top or maybe underneath. I haven't really figured all that out yet.

In this case I figured on manual tool changes. As far as the spindle obscuring the operators vision. You are correct, but it’s a compromise for the sake of simplicity and a more rigid configuration. And yes the X and Z servos would have to move some weight. But really no more then a Bridgeport table with vises on it.

@@EdgePrecision Would love to see somebody take a stab at it. Go with a CAT or BT spindle at the very least. R-8 has no business here.

@@ilikec don't forget 5c.. But that setup is cool because from the lathe chuck to the mill head could use every tool type of holder around.

@@Jeralddoerr for the "lathe" spindle, 5C or 16C would be nice. Maybe a A2-5 nose. If the tailstock was live, even better.

I don’t think it would weigh any more than a Bridgeport’s table with some vises on it. So motors that could do that would probably work for the X and Z axis. I think they use around 400-500 ounce in toque motors on a Bridgeport conversion on the X and Y axis. Again that depends on the speeds you want to move at.

@@EdgePrecision True! Scraped ways though, which are cheaper for the load. Anyway -- I'd love to see this get built!

Flimsy spindle and no ATC capability

@@MF175mp mine are cat 40 spindles.. nor sure how flimsy that is..

All mill turn and lathes with milling do it that way. Any holes off axis have to sink two or more axi to drill parallel to the tool. This kind of thing isn’t really a problem. My Mazak can even manually jog like that. There are switch settings on the manual jog wheel to let you do this if the B axis is tipped at some angle. If you think about it. What if you stop the machine drilling a hole at a angle. In order to jog the tool out of the hole you have to be able to manually jog straight with the tool. So this isn’t really a problem on 5 axis machines.

Very true! I was just thinking as far as a hobbyists’ machine where quality could be spared. If you start building this machine I’d love to help out with cad design and prints if you ever need it!

@@EdgePrecision Saw the second video. Love the 2 positions on the switches that allow jogging along a different work plane. Would be very cool to implement in home made machines.

A machine with this axis configuration could very well grind cutting tools such as endmills. In fact this is very much like my CNC tool and cutter grinder flipped upside down. The only thing you would need is the software to program the tool path.

My Mazak has the gear hobbing option. But to do that I would need a gear hobb for the particular gear tooth I would be cutting. Or It could be done in the normal way with gear cutters like on any milling machine. I don't really do any gear cutting on that machine. So I don't have any tooling. But the machine can do it.

Yes there is. The B tilting axis has a vertical slide way.

@@EdgePrecision Oh, I see it now.

I was unaware of this machine. I went to their KZfaq channel. Interesting small machines.

I took a look at their web site. You are correct the touch control here for 5 axis cost is around $1,350.00.

My idea (I didn't mention this in the video) with this, is sort of a hybrid manual/CNC type of situation. Or maybe more accurately put servo operated axis with manual wheels/controls. Fly by wire so to speak. If this can be done. So when you have the B axis tilted at an angle you can face or drill hole patterns at that angle. The control will sink the axis necessary to make the tool move in a plane perpendicular to the tools axis in X and Y and the Z parallel to the tool as normal. This could also be used for turning. My Mazak can jog like this in the manual mode, or in the normal X,Y,Z.B,C machine coordinates. This would be very useful to do for manual machine work. Or the machine could be put into full auto mode. To better visualize what the manual mode could do. Consider a Bridgeport type of mill. When you tilt or nod the head. You can drill holes with the quill but you really cant face surfaces with mutable passes easily or drill hole patterns. This would require careful calculation to trig out the locations and moving the Knee up and down to do it. But what if the each axis of the machine was actually driven by a servo drive and you just turned pulse generator wheels and the computer figured out where to drive the movements to make it happen. In the new work plane relative too the tools axis/B axis. You can easily turn chamfers or tapers face big surfaces, mill pockets, drill patterns manually. The only thing this really lacks is the tactile feed back you get on a manual machine. But after using my Mazak this way. I think this is a better trade off. Kind of a long comment but I think you get the idea.

@@EdgePrecision If you have access to the servo controller it might be possible to provide force feedback on the control wheels. I've done some experimentation with this type of feedback, you essentially use a very small gimbal motor with an encoder as your MPG wheel and tell it how much torque the servo is putting out and you then use that data to feed a PI loop to have the small gimbal motor push back on the user's input. you can search "DIY haptic input knob" for an implementation of the video I made about it. my video is called "haptic textures and virtual detents" it is kind hard to describe, but the feedback surely works. I think the hard part is feeding with this type of knob with a constant speed. I've not used a Mazak but I'd bet they have some very good algos for ensuring that input ends up as smooth output on the machine.

There is no A axis on the Mazak. The turning Spindles Rotary axis is a C axis. This is driven by a precision Worm gear drive. The B axis on the milling spindle is driven by a roller cam drive. Both these rotary axis can resolve to a .0001 degree accuracy. There are no belts on any of this machines axis.

@@EdgePrecision Thank you for your reply and generally for the useful content of your videos. I have already learned a lot through it. If you have the time, I'd be interested in seeing a video of how Mazak has implemented the worm gear with C-axis and motor in your machine 🙂

@@9voltprojects I can describe it for you. The worm gear drive on the C axis works like this. The worm and its servo motor are mounted on an arm with its end pivot in such a location that it can engage and disengage the worm from the gear. So when the machine switches between turning and milling it first orients/zeros the turning spindle with the turning drive. At the same time it orients/zeros the C axis. Now with everything oriented is swings the the worm into the gear. The arm has hard stops to control the lash between the worm and gear. With that done it shifts the spindle's drive into neutral. I believe on this machine the arm is controlled by a hydraulic cylinder.

@@EdgePrecision Ahhh, very cleverly done 🙂 And I have so often thought about how that works, that the axis / spindle can be so extremely stiff on the one hand, but can also rotate fast for turing. Thank you very much for the description.. Have a nice weekend, Chris from Berlin

Linux cnc can do this, I think.

The max part size as far as just turning would be 8” dia x 24” long. But if you want to mill on the end I would say half that length. Depending on the length of the tool needed. Everything is a compromise. As to controllers I don’t know yet. I have to do some research into that.

@@EdgePrecision seems like a pretty good envelope, but i didnt see if the milling spindle can go up an down like yours can go in and out for pocketing on the circumference, did a quick search and it seems Linux cnc suports some kind of 5 axis kinematics. And i like the idea of a tool room 5 axis mill turn

I think they did a Kick-starter campaign. But any more I don't know, if they made any machines and soled them. Someone in another comment said they reached their goal. But have their supporters got anything?

Sorry It may not be. I think I didn't pay attention to the settings when uploading it.

I am working on a video on some very small parts on the Mazak. I just haven't had the right jobs for videos. They are either repeat jobs I have already done a video on or a job I cant do a video on. But I should have this video out this week. Thanks!

@@EdgePrecision It's good to hear that you're ok :) .

Has Swissmak even sold any machines?

@@EdgePrecision They met their desired pledge on kickstarter of 120,000USD at a value of 187,000USD

@@EdgePrecision Pledge US$ 2,599 or more SwissMak - 3 Axis VMC Kit This gets you the simplified 3 axis vertical mill variant of the SwissMak. Heavy boxways, 30 taper spindle and ODrive servos for all axes. ESTIMATED DELIVERY Oct 2018

Yes but even used mill turn machines are expensive and large machine's not suitable for someone's garage. But it would be nice to have similar capabilities as one, for small projects. Maybe like making small engines or things like that. But I agree with you on the Chinese machines you buy a new one and turn around and rebuild it, to do anything.

The whole purpose of this machine is not to do what you are talking about in this comment. Get a bigger machine. It is not intended for that. You don't turn a tractor part on a watch makers lathe.

@@EdgePrecision The whole purpose of a machine is to use the smallest machine to get the job done. Floor space and iron cost money. Its all about the money.

So what are you optimizing for? Floor space? Money? Who is it targetted towards? And how is it going to turn straight parts without weighing a ton? Because i can see FEA issues from the way things are layed out.