Topics

1

Brains Development / Jogging with Brains

« on: April 21, 2010, 08:40:00 AM »

Immagine a simple pendant for one axis with three buttons.  X+, X- and speed boost. The idea being that pressing either direction button on its own would jog the axis at a very slow speed but holding down the speed increase button at the same time would make the axis jog much faster in the chosen direction.

Is this a sensible thing to try and do in a brain ? and would anyone be able to help me achieve this ?

2

VB and the development of wizards / IsActive Function

« on: April 16, 2010, 09:30:35 AM »

I'm trying to write some vb script which applys some logic to a button press before giving a suitable output but I'm struggling to acknolwedge the button press. Ive been trawling the wiki and it seems like I need to use the IsActive function but I cant make it work for me. Would somone be kind enough to share some example code so I can see how it could be used 'in context' ?

3

VB and the development of wizards / VB Scripting Basics

« on: April 14, 2010, 11:03:34 AM »

Please could someone help me with the code to make a button that only produces an action whilst the button is being pressed?

I have made custom buttons that will toggle, pressing once to turn on an output and a second time to turn off an output but what I really need a button that works like the jog buttons and will only enable an output whilst it is pressed and turns off the output the moment the button is released.

4

General Mach Discussion / Custom Shortcut Keys?

« on: March 26, 2010, 10:53:38 AM »

I wish to add a number of physical buttons to my machine to perform various functions such as jogging, drawbar release, etc. I figured I simple way to do this would be to write a series of macros and then assign an F key to each one which in turn would be controled by a pokeys card.

Is this a sensible idea or are there better ways ? Also how does one go about assigning a macro to a keyboard shortcut ? I vaugely remember being able to assign keyboard shortcuts to custom buttons in the screen designer software but is there a way to do it without creating a virtual button? - An on screen button would be redundant as I would be using 'real' buttons.

Also where can I find doccumention on writing vbscript for mach? A list of functions & syntax along with a few examples might save me from having to ask a lot of 'simple' questions on here.

5

General Mach Discussion / Rigid Tapping

« on: March 05, 2010, 05:39:07 AM »

Does mach 3 support rigid tapping and if so what features must I enable in the configuration and also what do I need in terms of hardware/electronics to make it possible ?

6

General Mach Discussion / Fixtures, Offsets, Origins & Suchlike

« on: March 03, 2010, 07:07:21 PM »

How does one go about machining a pre existing component rather than just a flat sheet of metal?

This is a concept i'm still struggling to get my head around as the majoity of my cnc experience so far has been on a horribly oversimplified educational system.

To give an example: - say I bought a cheap plastic injection moulded wheel from my local DIY store with a round hole in the centre with plenty of plastic around the edge of it. Now lets say I wanted to machine a hex into the centre so I could drive the wheel from a motor/gearbox with a corresponding shape on the output shaft. I've got the wheel and stuck it in the vice of my machine, and I've got gcode for the hex shape. Now how on earth do I tell mach 3 how to machine my hex in the right place so that the centre of the hex is in the centre of the wheel ?

As a second example, immagine i have a machined a simple shape from a thick piece of steel and I then want to drill holes through the piece at 90 degrees. So I remove the part and flip it round so what was the side is now on the top. I've loaded up my new gcode program but again, how do I ensure it starts cutting the holes in the right place ?

This is something I really need to understand as much of the work I want to do will involve machining things on multiple sides and/or machining onto pre made parts.

7

General Mach Discussion / Weird Stretched Screen Problem

« on: March 01, 2010, 12:49:03 PM »

I recently installed a new copy of mach 3 on a new computer (winxp) and then copied my profiles and screens over from a backup. However I have a problem whereby when I load my backed up profile the entire mach window takes up more space, all the buttons are slightly bigger as if it has been stretched out of proportion and beyond the original size. If i close and load the default mill profile from the new install the size goes back to normal.

Is this a known bug ? Can someone tell me how to fix my profile?

8

G-Code, CAD, and CAM discussions / Mastercam to Mach Problems

« on: February 26, 2010, 01:03:03 PM »

Using Mastercam x4 and the mach3 post, mach3 will not load my code without errors unless I go into config and set it to incremental mode. Could someone tell me how to make mastercam output code with absoloute coordinates ? Do I have to make a change in mastercam or is the the post processor I need to change ?

Would be greatful for any help as i'm a bit new to all this stuff.

9

General Mach Discussion / Limitations of PC Parrallel Port

« on: June 17, 2009, 11:00:37 AM »

Just wondering what the realistic limitations are of pulse speed when using a pc parallel port. Will it run fine up to 100khz with a modern computer or will I have to limit Mach3 to something much lower?

10

General Mach Discussion / New Machine Build - Mach 3 Help Needed!

« on: June 15, 2009, 08:09:07 AM »

Hi all,

I'm just nearing completion of a bridgeport retrofit using mach 3, natrually I have read the manuals and watched the tutorial videos and I have got as far as cutting a few parts however there remains a few things which i'm unsure about so I'd be really greatful if someone could help me out.

First of all here is my current mach3 XML file: http://www.ukcnc.org/bpt.xml as I'm sure someone will ask for it at some point. I'm running Version R3.042.020

Now onto the questions:

#1 The other day I was using mach to mill some shapes from HDPE sheet. For one reason or another I chose to stop the cut cycle mid way by pressing the stop button. I then wanted to restart the program so I pressed rewind and then pressed goto zero so I could start again from the same place as before. However when I pressed goto zero it did not operate in the way I expected and all three axes moved at the same time (i.e before the z had time to rise above the material) and as a result it snapped my cutter.

#2 What I would like to know is if it is possible to change the operation of mach 3 so when pressing 'go to zero' it zeros the z axis before moving the x and y?

To reduce mechanical and electrical loads on my system, the acceleration ramps on my spindle inverter drive are set quite quite high - somewhere between 10 and 20 seconds. I have noticed that this causes problems when running g-code programs because Mach 3 starts cutting before my spindle has reached the set speed. How can I tell mach to delay for longer without individually modifying every g-code file ?

#3 Is it possible to get Mach to automatically return to it's G54 zero position at the end of a program without manually pressing goto zero?

#4 What do driver watchdog errors mean ? I seem to get a lot of these when running my spindle at full speed. Is it likley that noise from the VFD is causing these errors or is this just coincidence?

#5 Every time I load Mach3 I get a message saying "No Shuttle Detected of Type Selected" what does this mean and how can I get rid of it ?

#6 I have setup softlimits to protect both ends of each axis and on its own this works very well, making it impossible to jog into the limit switches or beyond accidently or otherwise. I thought it would be great to always have this feature enabled so I turned on softlimits and saved as default settings. Of course next time i loaded up mach 3 I get an error about softlimits exceeded  and I have to turn off softlimits so I can 'ref all home'. Also because I don't want my soft limits to be right on my real limits - I figured it would be sensible to allow some space for stuff to slow down etc , after homing I have to jog all my axes slightly off zero before I can turn soft limits back on.

My question is if it is possible to automate this process in some way, so softlimits are always on but are ignored until the axes are referenced upon each load and after referencing moves each axis just past zero so as not to retrigger the soft limit warning ?

#7 Since calibrating my axes to get a more precise steps per unit value, the DRO's no longer read what they are told. For example if I type in G0 X10, my X DRO displays +9.9996 I realise that this is only a very tiny difference but I do find it irritating that it's not displaying the number I asked it to display. Is there a way to solve this without compromising accuracy of the machine?

#8 How do most people go about transfering G-code files into mach 3? I'm wondering what is the common thing to do here. With my current setup I have a dedicated cnc controler pc which basically just has windows and mach 3 installed and nothing else. I then have a separate pc with all my cad/cam software and everything else. Originally I thought it would be nice and simple and easy to copy files from one to another with USB memory sticks, however experience has now shown me that this is actually really inconvenient espcially if you are prototyping something / experimenting and want to make lots of changes to a file and test out the results.

I'm thinking some sort of LAN/WLAN setup might be the nicest option so then I could save my CAM ouput from one computer directly into the mach3 gcode folder on the other computer. So is this what the rest of you do ? I'm just wondering firstly if the networking protocols are likley to interfere with the running of mach and also how to deal with the thread of viruses/worms. I've read that one should avoid running antivirus or firewall software on their mach pc as it can interfere with the pulsing but then without any of that its kind of exposed to any threats that try to spread accross the network.


I think thats about all for now. Sorry for writing an essay here but I guess that is partly new user syndrome - needing to know an awful lot about everything all at once! I will be very greatful to anyone who can help me out.

Regards,

Dom