Machsupport Forum
Mach Discussion => General Mach Discussion => Topic started by: cncmoose on December 01, 2011, 12:58:52 PM
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I've done a lot of searching etc. but I still can not get the nesting to work correctly. I put M99 and CR at the bottom of the file. It's a square part with 1 holes with 3 different diameters and one outside diameter which is 0.7" deep. The code is created with the nesting wizard and I return to Mach3 run screen there are 2 parts in the table display. So far so good.
The first part runs great, but when it's done the cross hair moves to the center of the second part and again so far so good. But as soon as it gets to the center of part #2, it returns to the center of part #1 and repeats the cut on part #1.
I have not run this on the mill yet, just simulated in Mach3, version R3.043.050. Any help would be appreciated. I must be missing something really simple.
Thanks,
Leland
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Try it cutting air on the mill and see what it does, it could simply be a display thing.
Hood
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Hood is correct. I have my own advanced nesting wizard that we use on a regular basis. The reason is that the nesting wizard (both mine and the built in one) offsets the parts using G92 (or G52, same result), which changes the location of part home (0,0). Fixture offsets would also have the same result. Mach3 displays the locations on the screen correctly when it is generating the toolpath on screen, but when running it does not take the offsets into account. The same is true if you nest different parts - the display quickly looks messed up as the cuts in this case won't line up at all with the original lines in the display. I don't know of any way to correct this, and after investigating it seems impossible short of having the wizard rewrite the file and avoid using offsets entirely. Too much work for me, since it's only a display issue. One of Mach3's few bugs that can't be worked around, but I haven't mentioned it as I'm hoping Mach4 might correct it. I didn't want to bug Brian with such a trivial matter - I want him to focus on Mach4 because I'm just dying to have all the power and control he keeps teasing us with!
Hope this clears things up.
Chris
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Try it cutting air on the mill and see what it does, it could simply be a display thing.
Hood
Thanks Hood. I'll give it a shot.
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Hood is correct. I have my own advanced nesting wizard that we use on a regular basis. The reason is that the nesting wizard (both mine and the built in one) offsets the parts using G92 (or G52, same result), which changes the location of part home (0,0). Fixture offsets would also have the same result. Mach3 displays the locations on the screen correctly when it is generating the toolpath on screen, but when running it does not take the offsets into account. The same is true if you nest different parts - the display quickly looks messed up as the cuts in this case won't line up at all with the original lines in the display. I don't know of any way to correct this, and after investigating it seems impossible short of having the wizard rewrite the file and avoid using offsets entirely. Too much work for me, since it's only a display issue. One of Mach3's few bugs that can't be worked around, but I haven't mentioned it as I'm hoping Mach4 might correct it. I didn't want to bug Brian with such a trivial matter - I want him to focus on Mach4 because I'm just dying to have all the power and control he keeps teasing us with!
Hope this clears things up.
Chris
Thanks Sargon, I have not had a chance to run it on the machine yet like Hood mentioned. This is the first time I've had a need for nesting and it looks like I'll be getting a lot of work which will require it.
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Hood, Sargon,
You guys are correct!
I cut air late last night and it proceeded to cut both pieces.
Great news for sure. Thanks to both of you for taking the time to reply.
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Glad it worked out for you, its been a long time since I did the nesting but was sure it was just a display thing :)
Hood
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This nesting is super. I've run a few sets of parts and works great. I did make one change though.
When it was done it went to Z0 then Y0. I increased the Z to 0.5 before the Y0 in the generated code that nesting created.
I've never had to use it before. In a month or so I'll need to do 10 to 16 parts at a time,
Leland
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If there is sufficient demand I can polish up my improved nesting wizard - has some extra options and such for selecting nesting direction, determining how many parts will fit on a given material size, and few other goodies.
Let me know if there's interest.
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I am sure lots of people would find that handy :)
Hood
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Sargon,
I too would like to see and try what you have done with a nesting routine. I have work coming up which will require nesting up to 16 pieces at a time. One by one would take forever...
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Yes, one by one is very tedious. We cut up to 100+ parts at a time on our router. Takes a little while for Mach3 to read through the code for every copy when it's verifying the code, but it does work incredible well and saves us hours upon hours of time. I'll see if I can find an alternative method that bypasses this, but I won't spend much time on that - may not be possible anyway. I started with Olivier's code, but then rewrote it. I will work on removing the couple of bugs I've noticed and give it a once over before releasing it.
It may not be ready until the end of the year - work is pretty swamped right now with products that must ship by end of year, but I have 10 days off between Christmas and New Years, so worst case scenario I can do it then.
If there's a specific need before that let me know and I can email a copy as-is, but I'm not releasing it until I've looked at it again.
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Sargon,
Thank you very much, I'm in no hurry. What ever you could do would be very much appreciated.