Machsupport Forum
Mach Discussion => General Mach Discussion => Topic started by: NormB on January 07, 2010, 08:52:58 AM
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I am confused once more. I have been under the impression that X and Y are in relation to your standing at the Front left corner of the machine and left to right is X and front to rear is Y. Since my table is not square it's 24 x 48 it is a bit important but I am seeing in areas conflicting information not here but other places. Am I correct that 0-0 is left front corner of the machine and is the X axis right to left?
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Yes but it is the tool that should be front left, so when the tool is over that part of the table it is X0 Y0 in machine coordinates. If you have a gantry router then things are easy to see but if you have a knee mill or similar then it can be confusing as the table moves the opposite way than you would think.
Hood
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Thank you again, that helps yes I have a gantry router but it's still confusing when you get differing opinions. AutoCad always has 0-0 in the lower left, Mach3 has 0-0 in the lower left so I thought that was right but had to ask. 0-0 for my tool is always in the front left corner of the machine so when I draw or place an item on the table is drawn upright and cut the same way otherwise you are drawing on the side if that makes sense.
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There is nothing stopping you swapping out the motor pins to swap X and Y axis around so that the X is the longest but it may get confusing due to the position you stand at, so might be best just to leave it that way.
Also remember I am talking about Machine Coordinates, you can and will use work offsets, the normal one is G54 and which is normally what you are seeing in the DROs so you could set the work offset to be zero in the centre of your table and have both positive and negative coordinates for X and Y.
Hope I am not confusing the matter LOL, it sometimes takes a while to get your head around these things, especially if you are fairly new to CNC.
Hood
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Not at all you have been a great help. I do understand and that is why I use the front left corner since Cad programs use it Mach3 uses it so everything even the keyboard in front of the router is correct right arrow move to the Right left to left on the X axis and the up and down arrow moves front to rear. I was hoping I had not planted incorrect information in my head that would be hard to change or keep straight.
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:)
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I am confused once more. I have been under the impression that X and Y are in relation to your standing at the Front left corner of the machine and left to right is X and front to rear is Y.
What you're doing is correct, and I don't mean to confuse you, but which is the front, and which is the side? :)
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It's all relative to the operators position...isn't it ?
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For me the gantry is across the width and the front is with the Gantry to 0 in the left front corner. My router is 24 x 48 so it's important I layout the parts correctly or I may not be able to cut them for example a piece 26 c 12 if in AutoCad I lay that part out with x running to the left and right and y vertical which is the way the cad screen is laid out then when I bring that part into Mach3 it's not going to fit under my gantry I have to draw or rotate the part 90 degrees. to me the narrow dimension is X and the long dimension is Y
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For a gantry router, I consider the front of the machine to be facing the gantry. However, I stand and operate the machine from the "side", with the gantry running left to right along the X axis.
Your saying the X and Y axis are relative to the operator position. I'm not talking about that, I was just asking what you call the front and side.
In the link, I consider the red button to be on the front.
http://moi3d.com/gallery/images/wdx1.jpg
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My understandig.......
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But the OP referenced his home position as Front Left. Front Left is a bit vague. :)
Fwiw, I stand on the opposite side of your red operator.
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That is exactly what I have been trying to say. I am not really concerned where the operator stands only in reference to Autocad and it's -Y PowerStation and it's X-Y they are both in the lower left corner And to me that is the front corner of the machine and yes I can move to the side but My 0-0 is still oriented to the Cad programs. Your X is the same as mine butyour operator stands where he is not go0going to draw this part you are cutting. Not that it makes any difference. This is hard to describe without a picture and you have provided that an we are talking about the same orientation.
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I also made mention of the 0-0 being in my lower left if you do that where youstand it's wrong.
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Like this...?
:)
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Point taken.......... I guess we understood what we were trying to say. I also mentioned that X is my short dimension and y the long adn teh gantry is the short dimension At least we are all on the saem page..........thank you
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Like this...?
:)
Yes, that's the way that I see it.
And sorry, Norm, but I still don't know where you are calling Front Left?? Which is what I've been trying to find out. :)
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My router is big. I want the longest run to be the "X" . So I set it up with the 0,0 at the closest left in front of my router. "Y" runs left to right and "X" runs front to back. I can't walk around my router. I am the only one that runs the router. I use Ctu2D, When I first started to use it all my text was mirrored. I tried to find a way around that to no avail. So now after I have my dxf set up the way I want it in Cut2D I flip the image and then run the tool paths. Kind of a pain, BUT, it works and now I don't give a second thought, it's just automatic with me. To run the files without flipping them I have to orient my work on the router at a point I can't get to easily.
I know this doesn't help, but you might have to live with the problem like I have to.
Dave
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using your picture to explain the red button is the front of the machine as I see it. If I move to the button so it's at my belt buckle I am standing in front of the router and my 0-0 is to the left of me. The corner we see in this perspective is opposite to 0-0 it would be on my right if I were directly in front of the button.
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Then you should be set up as the blue op in the earlier post.
Dave just needs to reverse his Y axis..I believe.
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Just to muddy the waters, My mill has home as the back right corner >:D
No problem as I always move and then reset to the work coordinate zero.
My Router has the X-Y the same as indicated by others, this is basically because I consider the longest axis to be X.
Most screens are setup as landscape so it makes sense to have the machine set up in the same way, just all for visual ease of use. I have enough difficulty remembering thing as it is :P
Dave, I suspect you have some setting wrong in mach, you can flip an axis on the axis settings page. I definitely couldn't live with this being wrong, I'd forget to mirror on an important expensive bit of material 30 seconds before all the suppliers shut for the weekend. :)
Steve
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Normal CNC convention, like almost everything else, uses a right hand coordinate system. If you wrap the fingers of your right hand from +x to +y, your extended thumb points in the +z direction (normally up). Another way of saying this is that if you look down at the table, +y should be 90 deg. counter clockwise from +x. If the reverse is true, everything will cut mirrored.
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The only thing that matters is the relationship between each axis. Best described by the right hand rule.
Which end you call the front is just a user convenience thing.
Maybe you do work where it suits to call the axis with the longest travel X.
Maybe you stand at the "Red Button" end (see above) and want X axis left to right as you operate.
It makes no difference. So long as axis relationship adheres to the right hand rule.
Greg
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Bowber
Where would I find the axis settings page?
Dave
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I changed the X so it's going left to right and the Y to travel away in the plus direction. The problem is that I can't walk around my router, and I cut wood that is almost always longer than 4'. So I'm back to flipping my image before I create the tool path, or rotating it 90 degs in cut2d before making tool paths. Right now I don't see any other way to do it.
Dave
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Hi Dave,
If you put a 4x8 project on your table like the one in black, you need to configure your axis like shown in black. If you put the project on the other way, rotated 180 deg, then your axis should be configured as the red indicates.
Matters not where your home switches are, the HOME OFF takes care of that.
Not sure what else to offer.
HTH,
Russ
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I think what Dave is saying is that he can only stand at the short end, which makes it hard for him to draw that way on the screen.
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I stand at the short end on my router and have X-Y orientated like the black line in the pic two posts up. ;D
Just suits my setup. Access etc. Control console is on my right. And the gantry homes and parks away from me, out of the way.
Greg
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I guess it really doesn't matter what you call X or Y as long as you can keep it straight in your own mind when you set up the tool path. Bing simple mined myself I like to see the Cad screen oriented the same way my router table is so the the X and Y match and I am not making corrections from one step to the other.
I am rather new to this so I try to keep things simple and even that at times seems complicated but as time passes I guess it will become easier. I mus say this is the best forum for any product I have ever joined. Many Many ideas and I really think they are all correct for what each person does.
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Overloaded
My router is set up like your picture. The only two sides I can get to are the sides you can see in your picture. So I do most of my cutting from the corner in the bottom of the picture. What I was doing was to use that corner as my 0,0. I'm old as dirt, so it takes me a little ( ok a lot ) longer to understand what's going on. It only took three pages of this thread, but I finally got it
Well I'm going out and set my 0,0 to the reference you have in red. I'm still going to do most of my cutting from the same corner, I'm just going to set my 0,0,0 on the right side of my board instead of the left. I manually set my 0,0 each time before I start cutting anyway so it really doesn't matter. Now it's going to take about 8 hours or so to go back and change all my tool paths, but I won't have to worry about it any more.
Too much LDS when I was younger I guess.
Dave