Machsupport Forum
Mach Discussion => General Mach Discussion => Topic started by: ronniecruisin on March 03, 2013, 04:22:27 PM
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Hi. all. Just setting up a new Chinese Machine running Mach 3. The CNC came with some animal samples to make. When I load any of them into Mach 3 and press the run button the gantry travels nearly all the way to the back end of the macihine and too far to the right causing me to have to stop the machine. It is obviously heading to a point to start the program but I can't figure out how to change the initial movement to the back and right of the machine. My CNC is a small one ,(900 x 600 cutting area). Can you tell me where the parameters are located to change this?????. Haven't set up homing etc yet. Does not matter where I manually put the machine to start. Even fully forward and to the left as far as I can go. The machine still heads to the same place. It's doing my head in! :'( Ronnie.
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did you zero the dro's where you want the cutter to start?
Or is the drawing your cutting centered in the x0y0z0 fashion?
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Hi. Jonny. I can manually move the head anywhere and hit the zero's, but when I press the run button the machine heads off to the same position anyway from wherever the head is at the time. Don't know how to set the drawing in another position.eg centre. This is unfortunately my first experience with a CNC.
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Have you refrenced the machine? If you hit the ref all button do your leds turn green around the zero axis buttons?
Brett
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Hi. Brett. No. I have not referenced the machine. Is that the problem? Ronnie.
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I would try it and see. Ref all, then jog to starting position and zero the dros by clicking on the button beside them and see if that does better.
Brett
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Thanks Brett. I'll give that a try and let you know how I get on....Regards...Ronnie :)
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Wellllllll. I tried that and when I press the ref home button the z axis starts going up and hits the sensor which stops it and the counter keeps right on counting into the pluses and ignores zero alltogether so I'm completely confused because I have set parameters as came with the machine and even sourced from the mach 3 website In config Homing the figure set is 00000 so can't understand why it would ignore that. I've been trying to make this work for a week and must confess that a hammer is looking like a good option. ;D >:D
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Sounds like Mach isnt seeing your home switch.
Brett
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Hi. all. First of all Thanks to Brett for your help. I'm still having one issue. I downloaded Photo Carve trial software and it loads no problem. But the image is still beyond the travel of the machine. I bring the head right up towards me and to the extreme left and set all to Zero. When I press the go button the machine heads way over to the right hand side an barely gets to the left hand side of the image but can't travel any further because it's run out of table. This is also happening with everything else I load even from the G codes in the mach 3 files. How can I change this so it works properly.??? I've been trying to get this to work for two weeks now and I'm ready to give up. Frustrated Ronnie. :'(
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Do you have a value entered in your home off distance dros in homeing and limits? If not, do you have a work coords that is being called like G54? post your xml and code and I'll have a look.
Brett
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Hi. Brett. The Home /Soft limits page is set like this. X soft max 600.00 min 0.00 slow 1.00 home 0.0000 home neg ticked. Home neg is not ticked for all others but Auto is ticked for all. Other settings are the same as X accept for soft min Y -900.00 and Z -.70.00 . this is the way the Chinese said to set it. On the main screen when loaded X reads -2.5500 Y reads -3.4420 and Z reads +0.0000. Top R/hand of screen.....Mill G15 G80 G7 G40 G21 G90 G94 G54 G49 G99 G64 G97. Don't know what you mean re. XML and Code. Only very basic computer savvy. I can put co-ordinates in the machine and it follows them faithfully. eg. Set the counters at Zero. Type is say X +10 Y +10 Z +10 and hit enter. It goes there. But here is the thing that is frustrating me. i downloaded a trial of vectrics Photo Carve. It has about 4 pictures for you to carve. It is so easy even I can do it. Sooooo I get the G code into Mach 3. and here is the weird thing. My machines gantry has about a 700mm travel.The baby photo demo carving is 6.0 X 5.7994 Inches. The image is visible in the R/hand co-ordinates screen right in the middle. With my spindle fully left as far as it will go. Set all to zero and manually go right to the L/hand edge of the babys face. The X axis reads +22.2320 and the spindle is already half way across. Now move it into the image as far right as the spindle will travel and it has gone about a quarter of the way across the babys head and reads +44.2895. I measured the distance of travel of the spindle from the edge of the face to the Quarter of the face and it was 10.5 inches which means that the head would be about 40 inches wide at that rate. This is happening with just about everything I try to load. Although I have been able to cut the roadrunner sample and the Circle in the Gcode files in Mach 3. The circle I found I could move to a convenient location by changing the co=ords in the file. You can maybe see why this is driving me nuts Brett. :'(
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Hi. All. Belay that last post. I discovered what the problem was. Not enough knowledge on my part and the Chinese strike again! When installing the file to the computer, even though I followed their instructions to the letter, Mach 3 opens wiith some settings incorrect. I discovered in the Alt 6 page that the X co=ord had a stupidly high value. Y and Z were zero, so I changed X to zero and guess what ? It all came together and the above problem magically disappeared. I can finally cut something. Hopefully as I learn more things will get easier. For anyone interested the machine I bought seems to run very well indeed and appears to be solidly constructed. If your considering a Shark you should look at this one .Half the price of a Shark here in Australia and meatier build with a proper spindle. Regards to all......Ronnie
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:)
Brett