Topics

1

LazyCam (Beta) / Inlay Question

« on: November 29, 2008, 08:05:21 PM »

Hi Everyone,

Just received my Lazy Cam pro license and could use some help.

I am trying to Inlay a logo into wood.

It is a stylized text pattern that I will need to pocket the letters and also have the typical islands for various portions of the letters.

I have attached the file in the event someone can see what I am doing wrong... Lazy Cam seems to be able to cut the lines of the inside and out side of the letters just fine, but I cannot seem to get the pocketing feature to work....

Eventually, the idea was  to create offsets as well so the two inlay pieces fit together....  Funny... Thought that the offsets would be the thing that would give me problems...

Thanks in advance..

Pete

2

General Mach Discussion / What to do after a loss of Power?

« on: November 11, 2008, 10:38:05 AM »

Folks,

First of all... thanks to the help of Ray, Hood and countless others I have managed to get everything up and running...  Thank You!

I'll post some pictures shortly....


Everything was working great until I lost power last night half way through the machining process...  barley noticed as it wasn't enough to slow the router down, but the PC had to reboot.

Of course, afterwards I had to re-load Mach and the G-Code....

Here's my question ( I think I know the answer already) Is there a way to continue the machining process where it left off?  I have not moved the router however when I loaded the G-code back it zeroed everything at the point that the router stopped. Keep in mind that I do not know what line of G-code the machining stopped at, and of course, I am starting at line 1 again.


If not, and I have to start over, is there a good way to insure correct registration ?  or do I scrap the piece?

Thanks in advance,

Pete

3

General Mach Discussion / Setting up Steps per inch - Need Clarification

« on: October 06, 2008, 11:24:44 AM »

Hi Folks,

I have two different types of steppers on my machine.

Two are identical ( Motion Technologies N20 3451) and the literature says they have 200 Steps per revolution.  The third Motor I bought off of EBAY ( it is a RHT34 - 1200 - Rex Technologies) and am not aware of the steps per revolution, but have sent the manufacturer an email requesting it.

I am using 2 start 1/2" - 10 lead screws, (5 turns per inch) with Dumpster CNC anti backlash nuts, and 201 Geckos ( which I bought new so I assume they were factory set at 10 Micro step) .

If I use the utility in Mach to determine steps for an inch, it says I need to set the steps to 9753.147828 for the two MT motors. If I measure the distance on the table, It does seem close, but It's not exact.

The numbers seem huge but If I read other posts right, I should be able to calculate it on my own like this: 200( steps per rev) X 10(Drive Microsteps)  = 2000 X 5 ( to get to the inch)  = 10,000...  right?


The other motor seems to be around 1024... If anyone has any data on that motor it would be appreciated!

Thanks in Advance,

Pete

4

General Mach Discussion / First Post - need some set-up guidance

« on: September 14, 2008, 08:39:56 PM »

Hi folks, this is my first Post. 

I'm hoping to get some guidance...  based on everything I've read here over the last few months, and the huge experience pool that clearly exists in this forum, I'm very confident that the answer will be obvious to most of you and perhaps be able to quickly point out what I've done wrong... 

Well,  I just recently finished building my machine, and started setting it up.... Everything seemed to be working, but then the motors stopped responding. I was trying to tune them at the time and must have dome something wrong.

My machine has one bipolar motor, and two 8 wire unipolar motors wired in bipolar parallel.

Drives = 3 Gecko 201's

All of my limit switches are all normally closed with an external 5 volt supply to pull high on pin 13.

EStop is wired similarly to pin 10.

Ground is pin 19
Ground Limit Pin 18
Z = Step Pin 7
Z = Dir Pin 6
Y = Step Pin 5
Y = Dir Pin 4
X = Step Pin 3
X Dir Pin 2

I have attached a word doc with a few screen shots...  Didn't know how to include the XML file ( or if I was looking in the right place)...


Thinking that someone else will see it right away....

Thanks in advance for your help.

Pete