- Joined
- Jun 26, 2014
- Messages
- 619
Horizontal mills do not have their axes labeled the same as a vertical mill. On any machine, Z is always parallel to the spindle, left/right on a lathe, up/down on a vertical mill, and towards and away from the column on a horizontal mill. On a horizontal mill, the table left/right is X, up/down is Y, and in and out from the column it Z. It is very confusing speaking about it using the wrong nomenclature, and will get you into even more trouble with things like surface grinders, chuckers, and horizontal boring mills. Just remember that Z is always in line with the spinning thing.
I'm with thanvg - while I understand the convention (sort of), my machine has both a vertical and a horizontal spindle (see post #4 above) and changing the axis names depending on which spindle I'm using is likely to cause more confusion than clarity. Left/Right, In/Out and Up/Down works for me.
That being said, if Z is the axis parallel to the spindle, how is the X and Y defined? Is it correct that X is just the one with of the other two axis with the longest travel (I heard that explanation once but don't know if it is correct or not)