Topics

1

General Mach Discussion / Power Supply

« on: September 10, 2019, 06:17:17 AM »

Hi everyone,

Ok here is some background.  We have 7 EZ-Router CNC machines in our shop.  We run production, 40 hours a week.  We turn them on Monday, get them homed and running and dialed in.  Then they stay on all week and get turned off Friday.  We have done this for years.

We have one machine that, when the power goes out and comes back on, the machine itself is on, but not the computer.  For whatever reason, before the computer "takes control" of the machine, the x-axis motor wants to run.  As you can see, if there is an outage while everyone is gone for the night, that is a problem.  None of the other machines do this.

So I'm not very good with electrical stuff, but I have to figure out how to preclude this from happening.  Is there a setting in Mach3 I should be looking at?  How about in the control box?

The only other thing I can think of is, would there be some sort of "breaker" or some switch that could turn the machine off permanently in the event of an outage?  That way the machine is just off and could be turned on again the next day when we get back in?

Any help or suggestions appreciated.

Bill

2

General Mach Discussion / Respect

« on: March 13, 2019, 05:57:29 AM »

I would just like to take a moment and tell everyone here how much I appreciate the respect that is shown to each other on this forum.  I am part of another forum (sign industry) where this is not the case.  I have asked questions over there before on some other equipment I have, only to get harangued extensively.  So I just want to say I appreciate the mutual respect, especially for those trying to learn!

Best,
Bill

3

General Mach Discussion / Mach3 on Win7 32 bit BUT 64 bit processor

« on: February 18, 2019, 10:35:43 AM »

Hi everyone,

Ok so I got my first machine in 2005 and have been running Mach3 since.  I have found Win7 32 bit machines work great so long as they have the old parallel port.  You can get them used on Amazon. 

My latest backup computer purchase was about a month ago.  I looked for the usual specs... Win7 32 bit.  So I have a computer crash today and go to replace with one of my new replacements.  In looking at the specs on the computer, it says it has Win7 32 bit, x64 processor.  I have never run into this.  Sure enough, when running the driver test, it says "driver not sensed installed." So if I right click the driver test to run as administrator, it goes for it, only to crash when it says "taking over in 2...."  So I am wondering if I am out of luck because of the specs on the processor?  Not sure what to do, can't get the computer to communicate with the machine.

Any help appreciated!

Bill

4

General Mach Discussion / Step and Repeat Function

« on: July 24, 2017, 12:45:40 PM »

Does Mach have a step and repeat function?  For instance, I want to carve the word "welcome" at a certain location, but then I want to run 12 at a time, I can set it up to run 12 pcs from Mach?  Or is it better to do this from my Vectric software?  I'd like to do this so I can change the number of parts I am doing each time I pull the file up.

5

General Mach Discussion / Measuring Down Time

« on: June 01, 2016, 11:08:38 AM »

Hey all,

So is there a way to go into Mach and measure how much down time there has been in a week's time?  For instance, how much time the operators are leaving a machine sit before changing material and running again?  I'm doing an efficiency study.

6

General Mach Discussion / tabs

« on: February 24, 2016, 01:25:33 PM »

So I tried cutting out shapes by onion skinning and sanding through with a drum sander as per my old conversation here.

http://www.machsupport.com/forum/index.php/topic,31824.0.html

It was not nearly as neat and glamorous as I had hoped it would be.  So back to the drawing board on hold down.

Tabs-does anyone use a trim router to cut parts out of the sheet?  I will be machining 4x8 sheets of 3/8 plywood.

Here is a pic of what I'm making:

7

General Mach Discussion / Gecko LED dimming

« on: February 04, 2016, 08:45:33 AM »

So my machine lost position two days ago during normal routine.  Went to trouble shoot and noticed the LEDs on the Geckos are dimming during jogging.  Got the multimeter to test voltage.  Did several tests, but tested the voltage from the power ground terminal on the gecko (far left) to the terminal right next to it (says 24-80vdc) and got a reading of about 53 volts on all 4 geckos during a normal file run.  Granted, the router was not running during this test, but it seemed to run fine.

I did check out the y motors to see if there was binding, which might result in a higher amp draw to move the motors, but they are fine, no binding.

No idea what would cause a Gecko drive to have LED dimming while jogging.

Ideas?

8

General Mach Discussion / Ditching the Vacuum Hold Down

« on: February 01, 2016, 06:25:44 AM »

Hey guys, I am going to be cutting out some dog cutouts for a customer out of 3/4" plywood (11 or 12 ply birch).  The dog measures 14x10.5".  I'm also looking at cutting out smaller parts.  So I'm told that below a certain surface area, vacuum cannot hold down small parts due to atmospheric pressure.  Two questions:

Does this include a dedicated spoilboard with gasketing where the vacuum will not be opened up at all after the cut process?

The other idea is to ditch vacuum altogether and onion skin the parts, rip the plywood into 2' x 8' sheets, and send through a drum sander to dislodge the small parts.  I know the part will be thinner but this dimension does not matter to my customer at all.  Has anyone ever tried this?  I wouldn't have to set up a dedicated spoilboard for each job if I did this.

Thank you in advance!

9

General Mach Discussion / Sign Making with Different Thicknesses of Materials

« on: January 28, 2016, 06:48:50 AM »

Ok guys, I use my CNC's for Vcarving only.  We get 3/4" pine from our suppliers and life is good, that is until someone forgets to plane the material one last time, and the whole unit is thicker than normal.

At any rate, for anyone who does Vcarving, you know that material thickness is crucial, too thick and the letters appear too deep.  Too thin, and the letters are not deep enough.  S4S stuff is never a problem for us.

So we have a customer who does a ton of business with us who got the bright idea to buy some closeout wood from someone.  18,000 pcs of rough cut pine that varies in thickness +/- 1/16".  I already told this guy the thickness needs to be right on the money all through this supply of wood, but he didn't listen.  So I have some boards that are fully 1/8" thicker than others.  This will be a Vcarving nightmare.

So my question is, is there another bit that can be used to make suitable signs?  This customer is used to all the different fonts you can achieve with a Vbit, so extremely boring and straight fonts with no letter thickness variation will probably not fly for this guy.  Fonts like Arial are totally out of the question.  Any ideas?  I simply cannot plane the material as I do not have a planer.  Plus I think this guy wants the rough look anyway.

10

General Mach Discussion / Vcarving to Letter Cutout

« on: December 10, 2015, 07:10:02 AM »

Hi Everyone:

So for years I have been doing signs - all v carving stuff.  Now I'm doing some product testing where we are actually cutting letters out. 

All motion is smooth on the machine when doing a v carving tool path.  But yesterday when I went to cut out a few letters I had some very jerky movement.

Feed rate is set to 700ipm, so I thought maybe it was missing steps so I reprogrammed the file to run at 80 ipm which is waay slow if you ask me.
Still the jerky movement, but just slower jerks I guess.

I generated my vectors in CorelDraw and found out that the letter C had a zillion nodes so I was guessing that it was trying to cut a zillion line segments.

So I tested another font that seems to have less nodes.  So there was less jerking, but still jerking around the serifs on the letter.  Is there a way to set up the machine
so there is fluid movement all the way around the shape?  I have to believe that the people doing cutout stuff all day long don't deal with this.  But I'm at a loss.  Any help
is appreciated.

Thanks so much
Bill