Topics

1

General Mach Discussion / Lateral Movement After Restart.

« on: February 27, 2020, 08:11:07 AM »

Good evening all,
I'm talking about a 3040 bench router (from China) that has been working hard and well over the years.
Gecko drivers, Mach3, WindowsXP, VCarvePro CAD, manual spindle motor.
I have noticed that during a cut and I press the space bar, the machine eventually stops in X and Y (after emptying the look-ahead buffer). I then click on the Stop icon in Mach3 and the cutter raises to the Safe Z value I had previously set. All good.
At this point I can turn off the spindle, turn off the drivers to allow the steppers to cool down, or otherwise leave the machine to attend something else without worrying about what is going on while I'm not there.
But when I start up the machine to continue cutting, I would expect the cutter to be lowered back into its previous -Z setting before X and Y movements take place, but no, the X and/or Y steppers move whilst the cutter is being lowered back into the job.
This omits part of the cut so that on the next lap, the cutter has to cut twice the amount of material. This is a bit savage on a 1.5mm end mill in polycarbonate!
I've noticed this tends to occur more on a straight cut on either the X or Y axis, and not on a curve or angled cut line.
Does anyone have any ideas on how to prevent both lateral axes from moving until the previous target -Z value is reached?
Is there a setting within Mach3 that I have overlooked?
Peter

2

G-Code, CAD, and CAM discussions / CAD/CAM for Hobby Level Bench Mill

« on: June 08, 2011, 05:04:45 PM »

Apologies if this has been posted elsewhere; the forum is becoming quite extensive!

I'm running a small gantry type bench mill (300mm x 400mm) and using Mach3 on a dedicated XP computer. My goal is to buy software that allows 2D vector machining of wood or plastic.
I have bought BMP2NC so I can raster cut from black and white drawings, and it works well, but the time taken to cut away lots of open space at small increments (0.02mm) is getting excessive; ie, up to 9 hours!

Can I ask this forum what is the opinion of those with experience as to the most appropriate software to buy without breaking the bank?

I was about to purchase a licence from Dolphin but changed my mind when I found out their software is far too conditional to be practical - I can't have my computer connected to the internet whilst machining just to satisfy their paranoia...

I'm looking at Vectric Cut2D as a possibility, but would like to read about others' experience first....

Thanks,  Peter

3

FAQs / Behavioural Changes in Mill

« on: April 22, 2011, 05:09:34 AM »

The marriage between Mach3 and my small CNC mill has been blossoming nicely; my last run was a 4 hour raster cut of letters into a piece of Merbau (wood).

Now, any G01 movement in X results in excessive chatter, lots of noise, no movement or erratic; and sometimes in the wrong direction.

Unless I hold down the shift key - the direction may, or may not, be reversed, but the X motor runs nice and sweet. The other axes (Y and Z) all work as normal, both in G00 or G01.

I have swapped Nema23 motors - still the same. ie, X axis
I have swapped circuit boards in the controller - still the same; X axis
I have used an earlier copy of Mach3 - installed on another hard drive - still the same.
I have re-installed Mach3 and re-configured the settings - still the same.
I have connected another computer with Mach3 - still the same.
I have changed the parallel port cable to the driver box...

Mach3 has been set to a core frequency of 25kHz. The stepping motors are set at 400 pulses, Velocity down to 1000 and accelaration has been set down to 200 units/sec/sec.

Unless I hold down the shift key, X axis is all over the place...
I have run out of ideas what to do next...

Anyone have an experience with this?

4

General Mach Discussion / One-way direction in Z

« on: January 29, 2011, 05:22:33 PM »

I am posting for the first time here, so please bear with me. I have been searching this and other forums for this particular problem, and although there is a similar topic earlier, there has been no suggestion of an answer.

Anyway, I've just finished setting up a 3040 Router (the Chinese version) with Mach3 and after a rather shakey start, I'm now at the stage where the X and Y motors are running sweetly; but not the Z axis.

It will only run in one direction regardless of which key is pressed.

I have swapped the pin allocation in Mach3-Config from either X or Y to Z and the same effect happens on that axis.
ie, if 2 & 3 are used for X and 4 & 5 are used for Y, leaving 6 & 7 for Z; I swap 2 & 3 with 6 & 7 - the single direction then applies to this 'new' axis.

This suggests that the signals from the PC are not getting through?
I've looked at the Config pages dozens of times, but nothing is leaping out that is obviously wrong. I've allocated different keys just to the Z axis, with the same single direction.
Has anyone had the same or similar problem with this?