Topics

1

General Mach Discussion / Help with duel boards

« on: December 09, 2015, 10:25:22 PM »

Hello

I have a dilema where I run functions such as auto zero, spindle speed, mist/flood, water cooling, etc. Currently I operate all these manually as there is no free pins on my breakout board! I have a cheap breakout board lying around and am thinking of installing another parallel port in my comp and run this board as additional so I can utilize the pins for these functions.

My question - Is this possible?

I have noted that in the ports and pins config in Mach3 it allows for a second port to be selected, is this intended for this purpose? or is there a completely different path I should be looking at to utilise the second port function when adding pins?


Can anyone pass on some info?


Thanks Guys

2

General Mach Discussion / Another Auto Home/Zero button question

« on: December 01, 2015, 07:08:11 AM »

Hi all

I have a question about the auto zero button.

If I set my home zero to my base plate of my machine, then set my Z zero to the top of my workpiece, this will give an offset from home to zero (lets say 20mm work piece thickness)?

What I want to do is set an auto tool zero that works off my base plate, I want to build my touch plate into my baseplate, then when I hit the auto tool zero button it will return to the home position +40mm safety for tool length, then proceed to zero the tool but instead of setting the Z Zero it will set the Home Z and the offset for my Z Zero should remain so even if the tool length is different the Z Zero should now reflect. This will allow me to hit my zero the machine will move to home then zero, this saves me having to always place my touch plate to zero after every tool change.

If anyone understands what I am trying to do can you advise if this is possible and point me in the right direction to some code?



Thank you for the great knowledge bank

3

General Mach Discussion / Steps Per seem wrong, Halp Plz

« on: October 06, 2015, 05:32:53 AM »

Hello, Im new to CNC but built one as a project, it have it up and running and it works great.

My only real problem is the motor tuning, im using 200 pulse 1.8 nema 23 motors, Gt3 belts and 20 tooth pulleys on X and Y and 2m pitch 8mm leadscrew on Z direct drive, I have my micro steppers set to 1600. My problem is that I need to set the steps per in motor tuning to as low as 13.5 to get it to move the correct distance on X and Y and set to 100 on Z, I have tried using the manual calcs, using the xcell doc, these did not work, I then just taped some steel rules to the X and Y axis and slowly tuned them to move right, I got them spot on and was cutting things perfect to scale with the readouts matching movement. These settings however seem extremely low compared to every thing I have read. So I then discovered the inbuilt cal tool in Mach3, so I ran this and it gave me the exact same as what I had 13.5 for X/Z and 100 for Z.

No matter what I do these are the only settings that work.
In addition, it does not matter what microsteps I set on the micro steppers it does not change anything.

Can anybody help me please, im lost as to what the problem could be, maybe the microsteppers are no good?