Topics

1

General Mach Discussion / Slight hesitation/clunk in all motors

« on: January 05, 2015, 12:53:21 PM »

All three motors on my Taig mill now have a slight random hesitation since replacing a crashed Vista PC with a newer Win 7 PC. The hesitation happens both in jogging and cutting air. The sound is not quite as strong as the “clunk” when switching on the Gecko G540 controller. I believe all the settings are identical with the ones I’ve been using for several years. Except for the PC, the hardware is identical with the old system. I've played with the settings with no change in the hesitation. Has anyone had experience with this? Any suggestions to diagnose the problem?

2

LazyTurn / Turning only part of a drawing

« on: April 11, 2012, 09:52:18 PM »

I've drawn a 3/4 diameter 2.24 in. long clock pillar in the baluster style and want to use LazyTurn and Mach3 Turn to finish it. I'll form the 1/4 OD end parts that fit into the 1/8 in. clock plates first as I need to drill and tap them. I'm not up to doing that with a Sherline lathe under CNC so have not shown them on the drawing. I assume I must show the spigots, as these parts are called, on the drawing but how do I tell the two programs to machine only the center part? My knowledge of the relationship of machine, program and part coordinates is a bit hazy. The machining appears to be between the end of the billet and the chuck. I'll probably use a 4 jaw chuck and a tailstock center for holding and both a right and left hand bit.

Another related matter is the example of a 35 degree diamond tool in LazyTurn. I haven't seen such a shape in the 1/4 in holder size. I've got a set of Warner's holders and 80 degree HSS inserts but they don't appear to have 35? Any idea of where to get 35 degree inserts and holders, carbide or HSS? The 80 diamond's do not get fully into the corners of the baluster but a 35 should do better.

3

General Mach Discussion / Drawing a clock gear for CNC in Bentley Microstation

« on: April 11, 2012, 09:25:47 PM »

The PDF is a 7 page tutorial on drawing a clock wheel to use in a mill to cut out a wheel blank. The CAD program is Microstation but the idea can probably be used in other programs. I've used this procedure to do all the wheels for Wilding's English Regulator movement, run the drawings through LazyCam and Mach3 Mill and cut them out on a CNC Taig mill.

4

General Mach Discussion / Mach Turn jog not working, Mach Mill works

« on: January 02, 2012, 01:04:25 PM »

I've just converted an old Sears (pre-Sherline) lathe to CNC and tested the motors using the setup I use with my Taig mill. Everything works fine. Then I copied the existing Mach3Turn XML, renamed it, started Mach Turn and set up the configs the same as the mill. Turning the controller on and in manual mode, the motors "click" and get slightly warm but do not move. Jogging is on and the DROs increment on screen.

What am I missing?

5

General Mach Discussion / Taig steppers not running

« on: June 24, 2011, 09:16:30 AM »

After a move and putting my Taig mill back together, I found the steppers didn't move even though the system worked perfectly when I took it apart 6 months ago. Mach 3 shows the movement, the motors give the normal slight "clunk" on starting the controller. Recently I was given a newer machine running Vista Basic and replaced the old XP machine. I bought a parallel port card and new cable, installed the Vista patch and ran drivertest.exe (Excellent, then OK). Same problem. The motors even heat up a bit as before.

I assume the problem is not the new parallel port address, AC00. I put AC00 in Ports & Pins as 0xAC00 instead of the typical 0x378 and so Mach 3 should recognize the port. Right? So, I'm down to power supply or Gecko controller and have no idea what to do next. There are no loose wires. I took the controller and the X axis motor off the Taig and tried them separately with the same lack of movement.

Any suggestions? BTW, I always seem to have a problem downloading Mach. The downloading either stops a few seconds into the downloading or downloads instantly but Windows says the file didn't complete. I finally got version 030.

6

General Mach Discussion / Subroutine doesn't repeat

« on: February 15, 2010, 08:02:18 PM »

I've just installed a Sherline rotary table on a Taig mill and it appears to work fine manually with jogging. Now the next task is to write G code to cut clock teeth. The basic plan is to move the cutter mounted on the spindle in toward the wheel mounted in a chuck mandrell on the vertically mounted rotary table to cut a tooth, move it out to the starting position and then rotate the table. The code includes a subroutine to do this 60 times to cut a wheel with 60 teeth. The problem is that the subroutine doesn't repeat. In addition, the movement back out from the wheel is twice the distance it moves in. I had to add an 1 to the end of the subroutine, Mach wouldn't accept just an M99 or an O1 - it gives a "return called with no sub in effect" and there is a window tha opens with "Please wait, generating path." What am I missing in the following code (disregard the completely commented lines, I just borrowed an existing bit of code). I've also had to reduce the distance the X axis travels - it seems the scale goes out of whack after adding a rotary table.

N5 (File Name = Cut teeth on wheel on Saturday, February 13, 2010)
N10 (Default Mill Post)
N15  (G91.1)
N20 (M5 M9 Stop spindle, Coolant off)
N25 (M6 T1 TOOL Change Sixteenth)
N30 (G43 H1Tool Length offset)
N35 (G0 Z0.0000 Rapid positioning Z axis)
N40 (Rotate Spindle clockwise at 400 M3 S400)
N45 (Positioning of X and Y – rapid because of previous G0)
N50 (G1 Z-0.0100 F10.00 Linear Interpolation of Z axis)
N55 M98 P1 L60 (M98 Calls a subroutine, P is the Routine and Letter O is subroutine label number, L for number of times)
N60 M5 (Program end)
N65 O1 (the subroutine)
N70 G1 X.5 F5 (move X axis for cutter to pass through wheel at feed rate 5)
N75 G1 X-.5 F5 (Move X axis back)
N80 A.016666 (rotate table clockwise 60/360 for 60 teeth in one revolution)
N85 M99 1(Return from subroutine)

7

G-Code, CAD, and CAM discussions / Mill a straight line

« on: November 10, 2009, 08:28:28 PM »

They say there's no such thing as a stupid question but this one is close. I need to mill a simple straight line the width of whatever diameter cutter I have at hand. Basically I'm milling some elliptical holes inside of a rectangle 1 in. by 8 in. from a 8 in. x 8 in.  brass plate. I just need to "part off" the 1 in. x 8 in. piece when the ellipses are milled. I could do it manually but that's no fun. I could draw a rectangle, import it into Lazycam and use outside offsets but that means the cutter will be cutting air on 3 sides. That's no fun either.

I've got a 12 in. x 12 in. piece of aluminum that I'd like to cut up to make a tool plate so the ability to have the Taig mill a simple straight line seems like a very basic task. Any thoughts?

8

LazyCam (Beta) / LazyCam connects unconnected elements

« on: August 21, 2009, 01:12:28 PM »

A clock wheel drawn in Microstation and converted to DXF (12 or 2008 - doesn't seem to make a difference) and imported into LazyCam Pro has the six cutouts connected into 3 pairs. There should be 8 chains but LC shows only 5. clicking on any one of the chains shows it's connected to an adjacent one.

The problem started out as one connected pair. I went back to the CAD program, deleted the pair and copy/rotated another section. Now I've got 3 connected pairs. There's absolutely no lines in the CAD drawing that would justify connecting pairs of sections unless Microstation does not convert to DXF the way LC wants. And where does LC get the additional entities? I should get 4 for each of the 6 sections plus the inner circle and perimeter for 26. Instead I get 48. Check the DXF in LC and see the extra line connecting one of the sections to the O> icon. Why?

I'm curious about the O> icons I see after cleaning. I assume these signify that the part is composed of connected entities. Unfortunately, these seem to be part of the problem - they're connected to the chains. In addition two straddle a line in two sets of chains, another is outside the chain. LC is a great program but often frustrating.

Any suggestions?

9

General Mach Discussion / Linking DXF origin with tool table

« on: August 10, 2009, 04:59:43 PM »

With the help of Rich with a LazyCam question, I've cut a clock gear in plywood as a precursor to cutting brass. No teeth yet, just the cutouts for 6 spokes, the inner hole and the perimeter.

The problem is that I haven't figured out how to set the Taig mill's tool table coordinates to match up exactly with the drawing. The Mach3 chapter on Coordinates goes into great detail but I haven't figured out a fast way to make sure the cuts based on the drawing are in the right place on the table. What is the suggested origin for a CAD drawing, lower left corner, center? Given that, where is the Taig jogged to?

10

G-Code, CAD, and CAM discussions / Lazycam offsets off the wall

« on: August 05, 2009, 08:40:40 PM »

With the licensed version of Lazycam Pro & Mach3, I'm trying to get offsets with a 1/8 in diameter tool for a clock wheel where there are 6 sections to cut out. When I click on offsets, I get crazy blue straight lines and curved green lines, not lines parallel to the lines in the drawing. The attached PDF has 5 pages: (1) the original DXF, (2) the Lazycam image of the imported DXF, (3) one of the cutouts highlighted, (4) the result of clicking the offset button for the one section and (5) the result of setting offsets for all 6 sections. An offset starts as a dark blue line within the section but extends beyond it with faint green round lines. The last page shows some of the faint green lines actually appear to be an offset but most are way off.

What am I doing wrong?