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".

Make and Model

Spindle Type and Size: e.g. "CAT" and "40".

Max. RPM: Your spindle's maximum speed

Max. HP: The maximum horsepower your spindle will produce. G-Wizard will keep your cuts within this limit.

Coolant: What kind of coolant does your machine use?

Tool Changer Slots and Change Time: Use chip to chip for change. Calculator doesn't use this information but G-Wizard Editor does.

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 Rapids: G-Wizard Editor uses this information, for example to calculate how long it will take a program to run.

Travels: What are your machine's axis travels.

Acceleration: What is the maximum accurate acceleration of your CNC? This is used by the interpolation calculator to keep feedrate within this limit so you get an accurate hole. The number is usually determined through experimentation.

Machine Weight: This is used for Rigidity compensation by G-Wizard Calculator.

Spindle 0-max rpm time: Used by G-Wizard editor to figure program run time

Min. word time: A measure of how many blocks your controller can execute.

Coolant on/off time: Used by GWE to figure program run time

CNC Controller: Used by GWE

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

Making a Custom Tool Crib Instructional Video:

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:

The Tool Crib's Tool Editor...

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:

Custom Tool Data

From the Tool Crib's Tool Editor (double click any tool crib entry), you can access custom tool data by clicking the "Cust. Tool" button. The Custom Tool Data popup looks like this:

The Custom Inserts and Tooling Popup...

Custom Tool Data lets you enter data to override the G-Wizard defaults. You can enter data on a material-by-material basis for a given combination of Vendor, Product, Vendors Tool #, and Insert #. For each of these combinations you can enter surface speed (SFM) and chipload (IPT) for the range of diameters that G-Wizard keeps in its internal database. Any number you don't change stays with the G-Wizard defaults. This saves you having to enter complete information for a tool when perhaps all you're interested in is one material and a few diameters. Values that you customize are displayed in orange (see the screen shot) and defaults values remain black. The orange color also displays in the Feeds and Speeds calculator when custom SFM or IPT values are in use.

To create or edit an entry, you must first get the right combination of Vendor, Product, Number, and Insert to display at the top. If it's already there from a previous visit, no worries. If not, you can either Search to see if it already exists, or create a New entry if it doesn't.

To use Search, click the Search button to open the Search Dialog:

Search has uncovered one "MariTool" cutter in the Custom Tooling Database...

In Search, enter one or more values in "Vendor", "Product", or "Number" and press the "Search" button to see matching entries. In the screen shot, we've entered "MariTool" and gotten one match. To see valid values in the database, use the down arrow buttons on the right. It's best to work from top to bottom. Pick "Vendor" first, then product and so on. If you just want to see all the entries in the database, leave all the Search entries blank and press the "Search" button. Once you have a list, click on one of them and select "OK" to choose that data.

"Reset" will turn all of the SFM and IPT values for the selected material back to the G-Wizard defaults. "Clear" will clear the Vendor/Product/Number/Insert fields. If you save having cleared the fields, the tool will be certain to use G-Wizard default values.

Note the following: If you "Reset" but don't "Clear", there is no custom tool data in the database, but your Vendor, Product Name, Id #, and Insert information are still carried by the Tool Crib, unless you delete the tool carrying the information. This provides a way to track that information for tooling even in the absence of custom tool data.

Importing Custom Tool Data

CNCCookbook maintains a library of custom tool data containing manufacturer's tool data that you may download for import. The specifications for the import format are also contained on that page. The format is simply a csv file that you can create in Excel.

If you're looking to create your own Custom Tooling Data, follow the guidelines in this Excel spreadsheet.

If you've gone to the trouble of creating Custom Tooling Data, why not contribute it to the community? Just email your CSV file to CNCCookbook. Be sure to include a link to the manufacturer's data you used or a PDF so we can confirm the accuracy of the data for our customers. We'll add it to this list just as soon as we've reviewed it.

Good things will happen for those that contribute!

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.