Messages

1

General Mach Discussion / Re: Turn and rear tool posts

« on: October 08, 2013, 03:32:06 PM »

Sorry, I forgot to check for replies.

Ok, in the short term I'll just use negative values, and look forward to better support in Mach4.

Thanks

2

General Mach Discussion / Turn and rear tool posts

« on: September 30, 2013, 04:00:26 PM »

I'm running R3.042.033 on my lathe. It's setup with a gang tool plate. Most of the tools are setup as front post, however, I do have a cutoff tool I'd like to use as a rear post tool. Based on an old topic from 2009, using a mix of front and rear posts didn't work, but was something which was going to be fixed. Did it ever get fixed or am I SOL? (I have tested it on this version, and selecting rear post has no affect on the direction of tool travel as it should.)

If mach won't deal with it properly, what are my best options for coding it? My first thought is to just code it with negative values.

Thanks
Chris Manning
silverhandstudios.com

3

General Mach Discussion / Re: Odd issues in Turn with spindle RPM

« on: July 28, 2010, 06:38:18 PM »

Rich,

The only reason I want to avoid changing the index disk is that it is a nightmare to get at on my lathe.  I'm trying to get some jobs finished and I really don't have the time to get into that right now.  If I'm going to tear it apart I would probably prefer to upgrade it to a Halls sensor, but I'll need to do some research on that first.

Will .033 still support the multi-notch disk, or will it require going to a single notch disk?

Thanks
Chris

4

General Mach Discussion / Re: Odd issues in Turn with spindle RPM

« on: July 28, 2010, 04:24:59 PM »

Thanks.  I'll give that a try tonight and see if it helps.

Chris

5

General Mach Discussion / Re: Odd issues in Turn with spindle RPM

« on: July 28, 2010, 04:18:13 PM »

No worries.  Yeah that's the odd thing about it.  I installed the same version, and then copied everything over from the old mach3 directory.  All of my tool setups are there, all my machine settings are there.  The only issue is the rpm that gets reported.

If I uninstall Mach, will it uninstall the driver as well?  I'm thinking I should go back and reinstall everything just to make sure that it is all on the up and up.

Thanks
Chris

6

General Mach Discussion / Re: Odd issues in Turn with spindle RPM

« on: July 28, 2010, 01:56:22 PM »

I don't really have any interest in using a single index since the older version of mach was working fine with timing.  I'm fine using an older version of mach.  More so than rebuilding my index plate.

Anyone have any thoughts on why mach would report double the actual rpm?

Thanks
Chris

7

General Mach Discussion / Odd issues in Turn with spindle RPM

« on: July 28, 2010, 12:23:51 PM »

This is an odd issue and I'm hoping that someone has some ideas for me.  Here is the background.

I have a lathe running off of a G540 that has been running for 10 months just fine.  I have been using 3.042.029 during that time.  I use a multi-notch index disc along with the timing function in Mach to handle my threading.  It has been working beautifully.

Two weeks ago the mother board on my PC died so I picked up a new machine to run the lathe.  I reinstalled Mach, restored all of the config files from my old machine and started working with it.  Everything is working except the spindle speed.  I get a speed output, but it is exactly double what the real rpm is (so at the low end the lathe does 161 rpm but it shows 332 and it follows straight through the range to the top speed.)

First thing I'll say is that none of hardware other than the PC has changed (I haven't changed the index wheel for instance.)  I thought that none of the software had changed either after the restore.  I have tried to upgrade to a newer version of Mach, but the timing function wasn't working at all, and I seem to remember reading somewhere that the feature had been removed in favour of indexing instead.

Does anyone have any thoughts on why this might be happening?  Any thoughts on how I can test what might be the issue?

Thanks
Chris

8

General Mach Discussion / Re: Mach Mill and G76

« on: July 12, 2009, 09:05:56 AM »

The reason for the Y-axis is that I need to move along it to get to each new tool.  So zero on one tool may be X0 Y0, but the next one might be at X0.05 Y1.5. 

Anyway, thanks for the idea of just renaming the mill profile.  That seems to be working out just fine.

Thanks
Chris

9

General Mach Discussion / Mach Mill and G76

« on: July 11, 2009, 09:30:16 AM »

Recently I started using my mill as a vertical lathe for a couple of projects.  I setup some gang tooling along the Y-axis to avoid manual tool changes.  Everything is working out great, but now I want to add some threading.  I took some G76 threading code to integrate into my current jobs, and Mach Mill complains that it doesn't recognize the G76 code.  I was a little surprised that it didn't recognize it since I thought Mach used common code between the two.  Is there any easy way to add support for G76 in Mill?

I've avoided using Lathe for this setup since I don't want to go through the hassle of making a new Lathe screen with a Y-axis to handle the gang tool setup.  I suppose if there is already a 3-axis lathe screen out there I'd be happy to use that as well (I haven't found one yet so if anyone knows of one, please let me know.)

Let me know if anyone has thoughts on this.

Thanks
Chris

10

G-Code, CAD, and CAM discussions / Questions about Gcode and A-Axis

« on: April 25, 2008, 03:41:17 PM »

Hey folks.  I'm still very new to hand writing my own gcode, so please bear with me.  I'm writing a program to cut a multi-lead thread (I'm using a 60 degree cutter and my A axis.)  Since I have to take very shallow cuts on each pass, I have to make 22 passes at each of the 4 leads I am cutting.  I'm using G91 to increment A by the number of degrees I need to cut for each pass.  To save time I do not return A back to 0 after each pass.  After a while the value for A tends to get a little out of hand (not sure if there is an actual limit on what a DRO value can be.)  This makes it tough to see where problems might have been introduced.  Is there a way to have the gcode zero the A axis as if I pressed the zero button manually?

Here's a sample of what I'm doing (I'm using a subroutine to handle each pass, but this is the general idea.)

G0 X0 A0
G1 Z-0.001
G91
G1 X-1 A3600
G90
G0 Z0.2
G0 X0
G1 Z-0.002
G91
G1 X-1 A3600
G90
G0 Z0.2
G0 X0
...And so on for 88 passes.

Thanks
~Chris