Messages

1

General Mach Discussion / Re: Circular boring problem

« on: March 30, 2014, 05:12:11 PM »

Hi, I'm back from the woods, and my 1mm endmill served me well for both small and big holes. I guess my conclusion here is that endmills are OK on small boards where the amounts of small and big holes are fifty-fifty, but if I've got a board with a hundred small holes and two big ones I should use a drill and do a tool change.

Thanks guys, I learnt alot. NOW I'm boring. 

Knut

2

General Mach Discussion / Re: Circular boring problem

« on: March 29, 2014, 09:05:27 AM »

Thanks. So this means if I'm milling a circuit board with some of the holes bigger than 1mm I shouldn't be using a drill at all but an endmill, because drilling holes with endmills is OK too.... ?

3

General Mach Discussion / Re: Circular boring problem

« on: March 28, 2014, 08:33:56 PM »

My initial problem with Mach3 showing the circles wrong was fixed with the I/J mode setting. But as I said, I'm new to this, and I've found out that circular boring with a drill bit is a bad idea. I also tried with a 10 degree V-shaped bit, but didn't like the results. So I suppose I'll have to find some other bit that'll work somehow, or I'll have to start putting small (<1mm) and big holes (>1mm) in separate drill files, but I'd rather not.

I've attached the file that broke my 1mm drill bit. Thank you for any advice.

4

General Mach Discussion / Re: Circular boring problem

« on: March 28, 2014, 01:33:24 PM »

Yup, I can confirm that this solved the problem. So now I've got a GREAT way to break my 1mm drills... any advice on this?

5

General Mach Discussion / Re: Circular boring problem

« on: March 26, 2014, 09:34:10 AM »

Thanks for replying, that sounds like a reasonable solution. I'm not able to check it, though, because my mill is out in the woods in offline-land. I've got CopperCam set up to export G-Code ISO standard, and the next option is to export G-Code Num version(I/J absolute). My laptop Mach3 that shows things right has IJ mode set to incremental, and I'll bet my machine PC has it set to absolute.

Problem hopefully solved, thank you, Russ!

6

General Mach Discussion / Circular boring problem

« on: March 26, 2014, 05:43:16 AM »

Hi, I use Mach3 to mill pcbs. My software chain is DipTrace -> CopperCam -> Mach3. I'm a happy user, but I've got problems when the holes I want are bigger than my drill piece. I'm pretty sure my gcode files are OK, because everything looks OK when I load the drill files into my dummy Mach3 installation on the laptop. However when I load the files into my main work machine it seems like the hole centers are replaced by the file origin. All circular boring holes become ridiculously big and inside each other, not side by side.

I suppose my problem is easily solved with a simple check button tick somewhere, but I haven't been able to find it. Can anyone here please help a newbie in need?