Messages

1

General Mach Discussion / Re: Mach3, LazyCam, Corel X5. Help please?

« on: November 08, 2015, 02:00:04 AM »

get fusion360 it`s free for hobby/startup`s

All it costs is however many thousands of dollars Autodesk wants 2-3 years down the line for you to get your drawings back.

2

General Mach Discussion / Re: yesterday Y axis home works, today....

« on: November 07, 2015, 07:41:38 PM »

Update:  opened the machine up, re-seated the internal ribbon cable, now the switch works again.

So as I suspected, bad connection at the pin itself.

Time for a new cable.

3

General Mach Discussion / Re: yesterday Y axis home works, today....

« on: November 07, 2015, 06:34:45 PM »

TWEEAKIE, Unless YOU went into teh XML and made changes there is no way that mach3 SHOULD currupt teh XML. BUT there is a bug there that causes it. It is NOT your fault.

This happens with the LPT as well.

It is a LONG STANDING BUG.


(;-) TP

what evidence should I look for of this?

I have a backup of the working config, here's the diff.  I don't see anything here that seems grossly out of place (the input differences are me turning off the Y home so that the machine can be used, by manually zero'ing Y).

The OEMDROs are I assume what is included from Sieg, I built a config from the one they distribute.

Inches = original
production = the one I'm using
diffs = diffs

suggest you check the ports and pins settings for inputs that they are still set.

then have a look on the diagnostics page and see if they are tripping

(presume you have physically tested the switch with a meter...?)

Like I said, one day works, next day doesn't.  Nothing had changed in the config.  I did not check the switch with a meter because it still works, as far as stopping the motors when it trips.  There is no 'grind' as the motors try to run past their thread limits, they stop when the limit switch is triggered as they should, but the input in mach isn't showing up.  Yes I tried tripping the switches with my fingers while watching the input signals, notta on that axis, the other axes do show a signal and do work.  That's why I'm thinking a bad pin on the board or the smoothstepper must be the culprit, up to there everything works, the signal just isn't making it out from there to the PC.

Switching the pins on the ESS is a good idea and could eliminate the dead pin theory, didn't think about that, thanks!

4

General Mach Discussion / Re: yesterday Y axis home works, today....

« on: November 07, 2015, 10:28:51 AM »

Yeah, the profile hadn't changed, like I said, worked one day and not the next.  That's why I'm assuming this has to be a hardware failure.

Corrupt profile?  Can that happen randomly?  I mean, it's just a text file.

5

General Mach Discussion / yesterday Y axis home works, today....

« on: November 06, 2015, 05:21:50 PM »

I'm assuming this is not a mach issue but this being a very active forum, figured someone would know where to look.

Yesterday, I had a random situation where the Y axis zero on my machine didn't work.  In that, the machine hit the limit switch and stopped moving, but per the DRO mach was still sending a movement signal waiting for the Y to hit its home stop.  The E stop in mach did not trigger on the Y, but does trigger on the other axes.

I turned the machine off/back on and referenced all to their home positions again and it worked fine, didn't think much of it, maybe a glitch.

Today, the same story but the y limit never trips in mach.  I manually observed the signal inputs while hitting the switches with my fingers, and sure enough, the Y axis limit switches don't show a signal in mach, but the switches do work, because the machine stops when I jog to the limit manually.

This is on a Sieg KX3.

I'm guessing perhaps bad pin on the board or internal cable?  That's my best guess...

There's an ethernet smoothstepper so the connection from computer -> machine is an ethernet cord.  I can ping the smoothstepper with no loss so there's no issue with that.

6

General Mach Discussion / Re: Sanity check, tool offsets, home, probing, etc.

« on: October 06, 2015, 08:36:33 PM »

I read up on that after the last post, it's being suggested to me that G43 assumes positive values, so I changed the value of the probe length offset back to positive.

So I started over, zero'd the machine at the default 'home', zeroed all axes there, issued a tool change for the probe with a positive value set for its length, loaded it, made sure G43 was enabled and "TLO Active" lit up.  Successfully probed the face and all 4 sides of a board. 

Then loaded a sample program to test that I knew from messing with before started with a tool change, hit run, and it promptly sent that probe tip to the moon because I didn't notice the G90 at the beginning.   

Be back in a couple of days, a few dollars lighter...

7

General Mach Discussion / Re: Sanity check, tool offsets, home, probing, etc.

« on: October 06, 2015, 07:05:50 PM »

You need to be using G43 Tool length offsets.

In addition to having my probe length negative or was I wrong in assuming that?

8

General Mach Discussion / Re: Sanity check, tool offsets, home, probing, etc.

« on: October 06, 2015, 06:16:02 PM »

And I think I've figured out where I went wrong...

Edge zero worked just peachy, the height is wrong, I wound up with an inaccurate Z height by ~3 inches and change, had to catch it before it plowed my cutter into the board I was testing with.  If I want to apply positive tool height measurements to the spindle zero, then my probe height measurement needs to be negative.  That I'm thinking should work...

9

General Mach Discussion / Sanity check, tool offsets, home, probing, etc.

« on: October 06, 2015, 02:08:39 PM »

Setup:

I have a Sieg KX3 running off of an Ethernet SmoothStepper, have control of all axes in jog and spindle control, everything seems to work.
I have a registered copy of Mach 3 running on XP 32 bit, version recommended by Warp9 (03.xx.62 iirc)
I have the Calypso MSM screenset for probing functionality, and a Tormach 'passive' probe that is set up properly and can probe faces/edges/etc
I have Tormach repeatable height tool holders for all of my tooling, and have verified that the spindle bottom face is dead level so that I can reference from the spindle bottom face
I have home limit switches which are by default... Z fully raised, X fully deflected one way, and Y fully extended forward away from the machine

I have yet to cut anything in anger, I'm completely new to CNC .

Now, beginning with the probe (also in a repeatable height holder), I bottomed my spindle out on the vice I use, zero'ing the Z axis there.  Then I raised Z, mounted the probe, and touched it off of the same vice location, and that leaves me with a positive tool offset for the height of the probe, that I can reference from 'home' detailed above.  I put the probe in the tool database with a positive offset value that was measured from the touching off of the vice.

For the rest of my tooling, I intend to repeat the same process as I did with the probe, zero my Z on my vice, mount a tool, touch it off of the vice, and set a positive tool offset value.

So that for tool changes, I can add G code to return to 'home' for a tool change and prompt me, I swap the tool, and the program can continue from 'home' knowing its tool height for each tool.  I'll be free to change vices, fixtures, clamps, hold-downs, whatever, and since my tool height is referenced from Z home none of that will matter, yes?

And for starting any job, my first order of business in any program is to 'home' all 3 axes, and zero them as a starting point, correct?

And if I start this way each time, my MSM probing routines will also return positive values on each axis for the work offset, correct?  So that my probing routines should spit out sane offsets to start with, and Mach knows precisely where to start from based on the MSM probe routines and each positive tool offset, yes?

Am I missing anything here?