Messages

1

General Mach Discussion / Re: Side mount tool changer controlled by Mach3? Has anybody done it?

« on: June 20, 2016, 09:36:37 PM »

ok well im still shopping for a retrofit machine yet, just want to sure i can get it working somehow. Thanks for the help

2

General Mach Discussion / Re: Side mount tool changer controlled by Mach3? Has anybody done it?

« on: June 19, 2016, 10:24:47 PM »

We have two VMCs at work with a side mount toolchanger. One is driven the same way, probably a Geneva drive i guess. The newer one is a Mazak and is servo driven, magazine spins faster and smoother without stopping.

Looks like it might be tricky to get working. I supposed you could start the machine without a tool in the spindle, load a given tool, put it back in the same place when done and then call up another. This would require the arm changing twice and waiting for the magazine to turn in between. Would be a whole lot slower but probably easier to get up and running.

3

General Mach Discussion / Re: Side mount tool changer controlled by Mach3? Has anybody done it?

« on: June 15, 2016, 08:59:23 PM »

I have never seen a tool changer that puts a tool back any place than from where it came from.

Perhaps you have never watched them closely. Watch this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SAo8poNjDLY

They move all around the magazine with this type toolchanger found on the faster machines. Tool 1 might be in pocket 1, then in pocket 6 the next part, pocket 20 the next part, etc. You can view the tool data on real machines and it will tell you which pocket to find a given tool at any time.

4

General Mach Discussion / Side mount tool changer controlled by Mach3? Has anybody done it?

« on: June 15, 2016, 06:50:16 PM »

Wondering if anybody here has used mach to control a side mount tool changer? Im wondering how you deal with keeping track of where all the tools are? For example if you have Tool 1 in spindle and change to Tool 2, Tool 1 is now in the pocket where Tool 2 came from. So the pocket numbers dont match tool numbers, and they float around all over the place as you run numerous cycles. Seems like it would be complicated. Would this be tricky to do or is it easily done with variables some how?

5

General Mach Discussion / Re: How many people here are running mach3 on industrial machines?

« on: March 01, 2016, 09:44:18 PM »

Matsuura MC500 with 16 pod tool changer.  Mach3/Galil driving the stock Yaskawa drives and servos.  Running 500 IMP.  It does HSM perfectly fine.  The main limitation is the spindle speed which is 5K.  Using Inventor HSM for the tool paths.  It is not a large machine, but it is certainly an industrial machine.  It never crashes.  It always does what I want it to.  Never needed Macro B and it never had it.  (Original control was YASNAC).  Mach 3 is FAR superior to the original control.  Tool changes are twice as fast!  Rapids are up from 275 IPM to 500 IPM. 

I took my time integrating Mach 3.  All of the original machine safety lockout are used and functional.  All of the macros are thoroughly debugged and working flawlessly.  This machine could be put to production use and never blink an eye. 

Converting one of these type of industrial mills can be a really good option for the hobbyist.  I have about as much in this machine as it would take to retrofit a Bridgeport.  And you get nice things like limit switches on both sides of the table (no one switch wonders here!), real home switches, and ATC. 

I think you get out of Mach 3 or Mach 4 what you put into it.

Steve

They were good old machines. We had one at school when i did my training 10 years ago, thats the first industrial machine i ever used. I had a taig at home for a few years and the matsuura seemed huge back then!

How did you get the spindle to orientate? Been thinking more about how i can control toolchanger and the rest doesnt seem to bad, i think i could handle it. But worried about orientation. Anybody else have any suggestions on how to do this?

6

General Mach Discussion / Re: How many people here are running mach3 on industrial machines?

« on: March 01, 2016, 09:37:35 PM »

Im just using a five year old dell optiflex 32bit  desktop computer with the on board graphics switched off in bios, and a pci graphics card installed.
Its running xp pro, and outputs to a uc300 .
  What thats connected to has no bearing on Mach itself, it matters not if your connected to a machine the size of a house or a little Chinese bench top. as long as you have set it up mechanically and electronically correctly.
  I personally always use servo's on my retrofits because they are worth the extra effort 100 times over, and essential when doing the kind of work I do where I cannot afford to miss steps.
    Your best bet is to get a machine with brushed DC servos on it as this will simplify matters if you need to buy new drives.
My ATC, which is very rarely used, is one I designed myself using a swing in carousel , I modified the VB script available somewhere here to make it work, although im sure you could get something like a little "click" plc to handle that if you wanted
Hope that helps
Tony

Tony, what do you reccomend for DC servo drives? Ive used geckos on smaller machines but heard they will limit performance on larger machines. I couldnt seem to find much for large DC drives? I was trying to find a machine with AC servos so it would be easier to find drives, and plus you cant beat performance.

What machine are you using?

7

General Mach Discussion / Re: Feed rate override encoder delay issue

« on: March 01, 2016, 09:13:01 PM »

Im not familier with the pokeys56u but guessing its another type of smooth stepper?? If so the problem is alot of moves have already been sent by mach and are buffered, have to wait for buffer to be used up before feed override or even feed hold to activate. See this thread i made a week ago about feed hold with smooth stepper: http://www.machsupport.com/forum/index.php/topic,31994.0.html

You might be able to adjust buffer to smaller size maybe?

8

General Mach Discussion / Re: How many people here are running mach3 on industrial machines?

« on: February 29, 2016, 06:04:16 PM »

TBH I've been running in an industrial setting for 8 or so years now with mach, vmc with a tool changer.
Mostly large 3d programs cutting moulds.
There has only been one issue that has caused me problems which was probably mach, that was it not liking having two mpgs connected.
And that could potentially still be a hard ware issue that I haven't traced.
Every other issue has been of my own making.
   I would certainly say that if your hardware/computer is up to it then Mach is.

Tony

Good to hear its working well for you. Have any more details on your setup? What kind of machine?

9

General Mach Discussion / Re: How many people here are running mach3 on industrial machines?

« on: February 26, 2016, 07:23:50 PM »

For the most part Mach3 cannot do 3d HSM type motions FAST as it is limited by thoughput and teh Z accel values which goes BACK to money and how fast do you want to go.

Mach3 can be a great hobby controller within th boundaries of hobby type work and within teh Simple realm of hobby Gcode. When you get beyond that point it suffers from glitchs and bugs that will NEVER be fixed and can break parts and tools and you really don't won't to walk away from it often.

Can you explain these limitations with more detail? What exactly do you mean by throughput? In terms of Z acceleration values this would be related to servo/drive right? Or is there some other limiting factor with mach when doing complex 3 axis moves?

10

General Mach Discussion / Re: How many people here are running mach3 on industrial machines?

« on: February 25, 2016, 08:10:52 PM »

Sorry if the title is off a bit. Mostly wondering how many people have used mach to convert industrial sized machines and if they are happy with results. Seems like all the talk in the forums is about benchtop machines. Need to know if it can be trusted with a real machine. An unexplained crash might be a setback or a ruined part on a benchtop machine but on a 10,000+lb machine it could very costly and a serious safety concern.

We have two medium VMCs at work (40x20x20), one is a late 90's Taiwan machine with fanuc control and the other is a fairly new mazak. The mazak is awesome. Super fast, accurate, amazing control but of course is way over budget and power hungry for a garage machine. Something like the older mill with fanuc control might be affordable but its painfully slow. Does a terrible job cutting arcs at anything more then like 10 IPM, cuts more undersize the faster you go, It rounds out sharp corners, etc. 3d toolpaths are not accurate if you try to go fast, and it lags below programmed speed because it cant process the code fast enough anyway.

Im assuming that at least mach with eliminate these problems right? If i have decent AC servos and drives then i should get good accuracy at decent feed rates right? And there is plenty of look ahead so it shouldnt slow down in 3d moves right? Or am i thinking wrong?

If im thinking right, it should be fairly easy to get a high performance machine with no tool changer with mach. Of course you have to deal with the issue of toolchanger, but thats not an impossible goal and machine could be used with manual tool changes right away. But buying a working older machine in my budget probably means being stuck with a slow machine forever. Any thoughts? Am i understanding this correctly?