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Software and Information for Machinists |
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G-Wizard User Guide
G-Wizard Machinist's Calculator: Setup and Tool Crib
G-Wizard's setup page contains all of the parameters it will remember each time you start up:
Imperial/Metric Units
Select whether units throughout the G-Wizard will default to Imperial (inches) or Metric (mm).
Machine Configuration (Profiles)
Machine profiles let's you create new custom profiles for your machines. Each profile has the following information:
Name: Call it whatever you'd like, but keep it short
Type: Lathe or Mill. Router users should choose "Mill".
Max. RPM: Your spindle's maximum speed
Max. Feed: The maximum feedrate of your machine. Sorry, G-Wizard only tracks one, so if you have different maxima on different axes, you'll have to choose one.
Max. HP: The maximum horsepower your spindle will produce.
SFM Adjustment: The value, in percent, by which to multiply SFM. 100% will simply used G-Wizard's recommendation. 200% would double the recommendation while 50% would have it. There is also an SFM adjustment available tool by tool in the Tool Crib.
Tool Life Estimate: The biggest contributor to Tool Life is surface speed, according to Taylor's Tool Life Equation. This line tells you the contribution your SFM Adjustment makes to Tool Life. In the screen shot, setting SFM to 80% results in 6x longer tool life. You can get crazy with it. Setting it to 10% predicts 100 million x longer life. You should take 100 million as the tool will last a LOT longer! Because the numbers get silly after a while, I limit the results to be no more than 1000 times longer life.
Chipload Adjustment: The value, in percent, by which to multiply chipload. There is also a chipload adjustment available tool by tool in the Tool Crib.
G-Wizard remembers all the profiles you create. It also remembers the profile you last selected in the Feeds and Speeds calculator and brings that up each time you restart G-Wizard.
Editing a Profile
To edit a profile, select it with the "Machine" dropdown menu, change whatever fields you like below, and press "Save".
Creating a New Profile
A new profile is created any time you change "Name" to a name that didn't exist before and press "Save".
Deleting a Profile
To edit a profile, select it with the "Machine" dropdown menu, change whatever fields you like below, and press "Delete Machine".
Warning: You can't get it back and there is no "Undo"!
Reverting to the Default Profiles
To revert to the default profiles, press "Reset".
Warning: This deletes any new profiles you may have created!
Tool Crib
The Tool Crib makes it easy for you to define the tools you actually own or perhaps that are in the toolchanger of your CNC:
The Tool Crib...
Select which tool table you'd like to use from the Table choice. "Default" is the one the Feeds and Speeds calculator will use for tool selection, so that's a special table. If possible, make it the one that reflects the real tools in your changer or that you own. You can create new tables or delete tables. Eventually, you will associate tables with particular machines too, but this is not yet working.
To edit a tool in the table, simply select it and press the "Edit Tool" button. To create a new tool, press "New Tool". To delete a tool, press "Del Tool". The tools are saved when you exit G-Wizard to a settings file.
Integration with Feeds and Speeds Tab
As you are editing a tool, you can bring over the tool defined on the Feeds and Speeds tab by pressing the "From Feeds Speeds" button:
Over on the Feeds and Speeds tab, if you want to choose from the Tool Crib "Default" Table instead of the generic list of tools, simply click on the "Crib" checkbox and the tool choices will be those of the "Default" table:
Files Tab
The files tab shows you the directory where the various preferences and setup files are located, and provides buttons to reset these files to their defaults. If you press the button, you will lose any data in the file associated with the button. To reset a file, press the button and exit G-Wizard. The next time you start G-Wizard, the file will have returned to its defaults.
Note: Currently, there are a lot of ways to bollux things up with these resets. No permanent damage will be caused other than the loss of the data in the file you reset, but you will get better results if you reset all the files and not just one. We'll be working to make this smoother. For now, these resets are largely there to clean up problems in case of emergency or funny behavior between releases. They take your files back to a known "safe" default state.