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General Mach Discussion / Re: screen size
« on: April 26, 2009, 04:30:54 PM »
Did you reload the screen or restart Mach after you checked that option?
Hood
Hood
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Hello my name is Oscar and im new in here.
Im working as an Automation engineer in sweden.
I have an 3 axis CNC mill at home with an old Bosch cnc system on that im planning to change to something new and i have been looking alot at the Mach 3 and i have some questions i hope some one could help me with?
First i wanna say that i have been looking at some other systems also like, Fanuc, Beckhoff and so on. But the price is far alot more money.
1) I wounder how good is the performance in the Mach 3, compared to more expensive systems like, fanuc, siemens?
2) If i have the right Servo amplifiers and motors and my mechanical on my machine is good, can this system then performace the same quality as the big systems from Siemens, Fanuc ?
3) I have been looking at Omron Sigma II drives at 2kw (8Nm on motor) for the axis movements, Is there any idea to use Absolut encoders on the motors or that is just overkill? Or inkremental is good enought?
4) I have also been looking at the SmoothStepper USB card, is this something to recommend when i use drives like this? Or maybe this is something to recommend anyway now that is excists?
5) Is the SmoothStepper card more stable than the parallelport system?
6) Is there any special good breakout card that you guys would recommend me to buy? Is it good to have the Chargepump function on the breakout card?
7) If i would like to have an MPG i think it's called. this hand held pendant with an handwheel on and with switches. Do i connect this to the breakout card? Some one know were i can this that is compatible with the Mach 3!
8 ) Is it possible to connect the pulse train from the drives to the Mach 3? Or this is there no meaning with it? If i have got it right there is no closed loop in the mach with the drives?You can connect the encoders to Mach but as you have said it is Open loop so it will be for monitoring purposes only. Your drives close the loop so that is not needed when you are talking about Industrial type servo drives as they will close the loop very effectively.
9) Can the mach 3 calculate the load of the axis drives and show it on the monitor, like fanuc and all other systems have? or do i need to connect an feedback from my drives to the mach 3 if its possible? Maybe over the Modbus from an PLC system?That will be a function of your drives, the ones I have have analogue outputs and I have selected and scaled the current and put it to a meter on my console, it shows the spindle load. It could be put into Mach via Analogue inputs on a PLC and I may at some point do this myself but for the moment I am happy with a real meter.
10 ) Can i use an Axis drive like the 4th servo axis and use it for my spindle on the mill? Or the only spindle control is on the PWM output from the breakoutcard?You can use a Servo drive as a spindle and set it up to use step and direction, I have a 12.5Kw AC Servo on my lathe for the spindle and a 8KW AC Servo on the mill I am presently retrofitting.
11) Is it possible to use the spindle control for more advanced functions like making threads? Fast ramping down, driving on low controled speed?At this time the spindle on the mill does not support rigid tapping, it can be done using a floating holder or you could use swap axis feature but unfortunately that is not supported by the SS at this time. Speed control if using a servo for the spindle is no problem, just tell the spindle what sp[eed to do and it will be exact
12) How many rows with G-codes can i have in an program? Is it the harddrive on my computer that will do the limit?
Given that there is no way currently to accomplish the above described scenario, the only practical work-around that I came up with for 'continuous' revolution of the A axis to accomplish the desired cut is to use what is available which is huge azimuth numbers. Fortunately, so far I have not hit the wall with what Mach will put up with in this devious trickery . . .
If you are referring to the up and down buttons in the Spindle Speed panel on the program run page, then no they did not have any effect for me but then that was several versions ago and I was having trouble with the whole speed control issue anyway.