Messages

1

General Mach Discussion / Re: Direction of rotation

« on: March 26, 2010, 05:28:43 PM »

Thank you both for the advise.... i will check the the wiring to see if it is loose, I will also check the voltage at the dir pin this weekend and report the findings.

2

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: New people welcome !! Come in here and introduce your self!

« on: March 26, 2010, 05:24:05 PM »

Hello my name is Shane and I have been hooked on cnc for about 10 years. I was employed as a project manager for a local millwork company who owned a Mayer cnc beam saw and a weeke Cnc router. I was the one who generated to cutlists for these machines. Mostly converting dxf files I drew in autocad to g code.

I now have a millwork company of my own and have a Holzma beam saw of my own... robots are the way to go for accuracy and speed.

For the last four years I have been struggling to make a small cnc router to process parts after they leave the saw.... it's been very difficult, and I had given up on it three of those years.

The machine I built is a gantry style with a working table of 6' x 3'.... it's a mixture of steel and aluminum for the frame,  the movements are made using ballscrews and pillow block linear slides, mach 3 of course is the control program and a logitrol cnc miscostepper drive handles the motor moves. The motors are a little much .... 1200 ozin for the x and y axis and a 283 ozin for the z, but i tried moving the x and y with 283 ozin motors and it just didn't work. I probably could have geared the motors but my plan was to direct drive them for the simplicity of configuration.

Anyway, I am not a machinist and the project has been very challenging for me.... fun... but challenging. I finally think I have it half way licked, and I am again excited about the possibilities it should be capable of. Once i pass the hurdle of getting the machine working, I will again be in my comfort zone of drawing parts for it to cut.

3

General Mach Discussion / Direction of rotation

« on: March 26, 2010, 04:07:55 PM »

Hello forum, I'm new, and confused

I am having trouble with the direction signal sent.... I'm not sure if it a difficulty with mach 3 or my motor drive (logitrol cnc 7 amp extra duty 4 axis stepper driver)... but I think it really is in the mach software, for it even happens when I am using the keyboard for movement in the motor tuning area.

The difficulty is the machine will not recognize the correct direction.... when jogging one way, and then trying to jog the other way, it only sometimes listens..... more often than not it will just keep going the same direction, no matter how many times I key the joystick to make it reverse directions.

It also happens when a program is run.... i tried cutting the cross.tap file and ended up with a lot of squiggly lines... mostly in one direction, but sometimes it did reverse and squiggle the other way.



I am not sure of the social customs in here, and I hope this isn't to simple of a question that I could have figured out by myself.... but the electronics part is way over my head, hence the reason I bought a kit for the motors.

Although I can use a volt meter, I am not skillful with one......so checking the port to see if the correct signal is being sent to the motor driver is a mystery to me. I also thought about reloading the software to clear up any driver issues, but decided i should ask for help before I under take reloading everything. There might be a less time consuming fix