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General Mach Discussion / X Axis Scaling Problem

« on: September 27, 2015, 06:00:19 PM »

Hello, my machine is scaled and cuts squares and circles accurately. When I try to cut a figure into a plaque the x axis movement when left of center appears to be scaled down. The resulting carving looks kind of egg-shaped. I've tried using the center of the part for zero and I've tried using lower left corner for zero and both have this issue. This is a new machine running Mach3 with a parallel port. I have tried some older code I used successfully with another machine and it has the same egg shaped output on this machine. If I look at the toolpath tab and compare the X extents of the code with what actually is carved it's obvious that anything left of center is scaled downward. The final carving doesn't have any jagged edges or signs of the machine "hiccupping. It's what I would expect to see if there were some sort of leadscrew compensation on the x axis. There is no compensation employed and the x axis works as it should when done manually and compared against a ruler. The toolpath looks OK in Mach3 but doesn't follow what is actually being carved. Does anybody have any ideas? It's one of the Chinese import machines. I was thinking the controls would need to be replaced when I bought it but they seem to work OK other than this problem.  Thanks for listening to my frustrated ranting!