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G-Wizard User Guide
G-Wizard Machinist's Calculator
Try G-Wizard for Free and save time too!
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Why
spend your time leafing through Machinist's Handbooks, manufacturer's
literature, and scratching your head over feeds and speeds or other
calculations?
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I found myself wasting way too much time calculating and preparing when I wanted to be making chips. I kept coming across articles and information that showed me how to do it better, but it got harder and harder to organize all that information. So, I started writing the software I call G-Wizard, a full-featured Machinist's calculator:
Go ahead, you know you'd like to try G-Wizard!
All the commonly used information is right there at your fingertips including:
- Unit Conversions
- Fractions
- Feeds and Speeds with compensation for chip thinning, lead angle, depth of cut, and ballnosed cutters. Feeds and speeds are provided for all common turning, milling, and drilling operations.
- Triangle/Trigonometry calculations including right and oblique triangles
- Bolt circles
- Dovetails
- Tapers
- Chamfers
- Chords
- True Position
- Thread reference information for UN, ISO Metric, and Pipe threads
- Drill index
- Socket and Flat Head Cap Screw dimensions
- Area and Volume calculator with catalog of standard fabrication shapes. Estimate volumes, weights, and costs for your raw materials
Whether you're a CNC programmer writing g-codes or a manual machinist tired of working through machine formulas, G-Wizard will help save you time.
Everyone is Welcome to Try the G-Wizard Beta Test!
"Beta Test" means G-Wizard is still under development and you may encounter some problems with it. As such, I won't charge for it until I've declared it is ready for prime time, and even then, I won't charge much. In the meanwhile, you're welcome to play with it completely for free. As I write this, there are hundreds of Beta testers out there, and the number grows daily. G-Wizard is getting a workout!
OK, if you'd like to try GWizard, the next thing you need to do is send me a note. Everyone is welcome to try G-Wizard during the Beta test, so don't be shy! I need your email address, your first, and last name to turn it on for you. That's it.
G-Wizard verifies that your email is on my guest list and won't let you do much except the basic calculator if you are not. Next step, after you hear back from me you are on the list, is to click the button:
Here's what is going to happen. You'll be taken to another page which offers a button called "Install Now". Press that button. GWizard uses Adobe AIR (sort of like Flash but it lets you run GWizard as an app instead of from your browser), so the first thing it'll do is make sure you have AIR installed. Just follow the directions and the G-Wizard installer will take care of that automatically. If you already have AIR, it will move right along to installing GWizard. Tell it to go for it.
That's all there is to it. The Install will offer to run GWizard, or you can run it out of the directory you installed it to. After installing, the first thing you need to do is click the "Login" button at the top and give it your email. Until it verifies you're one of the registered users, it won't let you do much but use the Calculator page. You will also need to accept the end user license agreement to move on to the other functions.
G-Wizard runs on Windows, Mac's, and Linux machines since they all support Adobe Flash and Air.
Remember, GWizard is copyrighted. You may not distribute it to anyone without my permission. Send them here to this page and have them request registration from me if you know someone that wants a copy.
About Having the Latest Version
GWizard will tell you when it is time to download a new version. Just check the righthand side of the message bar. If you have the latest available version, there will be a message that says:
Your G-Wizard is up to date
Note that G-Wizard won't let you logon unless it can access the Internet. It needs to retrieve data for it's functions from the net. Since G-Wizard is still under development, it is highly recommended that you download new versions whenever they are available.
If you're wondering what is in the new version, there is a G-Wizard Change Log page that tells what changes were made with each version. You'll also find a link on that page to let you download the latest release.
GWizard Functions
Calculator
Calculator does fractions, unit conversions, and a whole lot more!
The calculator is tailored to the needs of a machinist. It does trig and unit conversions and should be pretty self-explanatory. Select the units the calculator is using with the button next to the calculator's display. Select the units to convert to with the button on the right. The screen shot above shows an "inches to millimeters" conversion. If you want to swap the units, press the "<-Use" button. The inches and millimeters will exchange places. The Calculator can convert over 100 different units.
There is a fractions capability on the calculator. Press the "Frac." button to add a fractional amount to the current value. For example, enter a "1", press "Frac.", click "1/2", and the calculator now displays "1.5". In addition, the "Frac." button will display the fraction any time the calculator display is within a tenth of any 1/32. So enter "0.375" and the button's label changes to read "3/8". This makes it easy for you to deal with fractions.
Feeds and Speeds
A feed and speed calculator. Operation is left to right, top to bottom. So, start filling things in at the top:
- You select your machine, the material, and the tool. Currently, the machine type is being ignored. It's there for future functions.
- Next row you tell it the cutter diameter and number of flutes. The drill chart will let you enter a standard twist drill size for the cutter diameter. The Ballnose Cutter checkbox does compensation for Ballnose cutters. Speeds and feeds differ because depth of cut changes the effective diameter of the cutter on a ballnose.
- Lastly, enter the cut depth and the cut width. You can click "Slot", "Rough", or "Finish" to stick some default values in. Slot is full width, rough is 65% (a heavy roughing cut), and finish is 3%.
Now you can read off all the parameters of your cut. Any of the indicators that have that little round circle to the right are ones you can override from the recommended settings.
The Feeds and Speeds calculator handles a tremendous number of calculations and adjustments to arrive at its recommendations. It's the heart of G-Wizard. For more details, see the Feeds and Speeds User Guide.
Geometry
Geometry has a series of specialized calculators for solving geometry problems involving:
- Right triangles where one angle is 90 degrees.
- Oblique triangles where all three angles are arbitrary.
- Bolt circles: Calculate the DRO coordinates for all the holes in a bolt circle.
- Dovetails: Measure inside and outside dovetails with precision pins.
- Tapers: Calculations for machining tapers.
- Chamfer/Drill: Calculations for various tapered hole boring such as chamfers, center drills, spot drills and the like.
- Chords: Calculator for chords of circles.
- True Precision: Per a suggestion by Widgitmaster, I have added a True Precision calculator, which is a Geometric Tolerance concept. It is the square root of each of the error components squared. In other words, it is the Euclidean distance of the error. To make room for "True Precision", I moved "Areas and Volumes" to the "Quick Ref" tab.
Threads
The Threads page delivers dimensions associated with different thread families.
Quick References
Handy reference materials:
- Standard twist drill sizes
- Dimensions of socket head cap screws
- Areas and Volumes: Calculator for areas and volumes as well as weights of standard shape sizes.
Problems With G-Wizard? Suggestions for How to Improve it?
Remember, this is a program in development, you should expect to see some bugs! If you are in doubt about something, don't trust G-Wizard. Verify using some other method.
Make sure you have installed the latest version of G-Wizard as it will be rapidly evolving. G-Wizard is supposed to tell you when it's time to re-install, so keep an eye on the message. If you're in doubt, you can reinstall any time with no worries. There should not be a need to uninstall. Just rerun the install, and the installer will do the right thing.
Lastly, I am all ears when it comes to learning about problems and hearing your suggestions for G-Wizard. It's a labor of love that I work on in my spare time (of which there is little), and I want to make it better and better. Send me an email with your thoughts.