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1

General Mach Discussion / China 3020 Machine Losing Axis position

« on: October 22, 2012, 05:32:51 PM »

So, I bought a chinese desktop engraver machine (yes I know, I am cheap)

I bought for offline serial numbering for a part we run. Bought Mach3, got my serial macro to work great.

The problem is, I ran like 50 parts with extensive engraving on it and all of a sudden the "X" axis is not repeating. It some times moves .020" to .125" when I reference back to Zero. Basically cannot rerun the part on the machine if I need to drop the engraving depth.

I thought maybe the coupler on the stepper motor was slipping so I took it off, ground a flat on the screw and put a set of set screws in the coupler to clamp on the flats of the shaft. Ran it again, and with one run, it's off by .020"


So I guess I am asking for troubleshooting suggestions....

Could it be backlash?
Could it be the controller? (Is there a plug and play replacement board one would recommend for these units?)
Could it be the screw? (Is there something someone would recommend for a better screw system on this unit?)
Could it be the stepper motor? (is there better replacements here also?)


Any direction and insight would be great for those that have been playing around with these things.

I have an upgraded spindle coming (24K rpm), and would really be nice to nail down this lack of repeatability of this thing.

Thank you,

Mike in MN

2

General Mach Discussion / DRO problem???

« on: October 08, 2012, 12:48:55 AM »

Hello group, I just bought Mach3 and I am an addict...

Mike from MN here..

I am trying to take the shared serial number macro and make it my own.

I cut it up and replaced the "g-code" with my own and modifying it and works.

The problem is that I need to use an input with trailing zeros, example:

0001
00001
012
01112

The DROs default is either integer or double and it does not let you use trailing zeros.

I cannot explicitly define the number of trailing zeros because the number of digits will vary as you can tell my the example.

Ideally I have it setup to add +1 to the number so it is just a matter of typing it in and hitting cycle start with the proper "M-Code" but if there is some way I can place a "textbox" on the screen I would just manually type each serial in as I go (the Macro sub converts the data to a string anyways).

So can anyone help me out. In the screen editors I downloaded, neither has a textbox input option just labels that are hard coded.

Thank you,

Mike in MN