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1

General Mach Discussion / Implementing 3 MPG's one for each of X Y and Z Axis

« on: July 20, 2008, 03:58:43 PM »

I need some help on implementing MPG's on a 3 axis Mill. I wish to use 3 quadrature rotary encoders, one per axis, so that I can manually drive any axis from these 'electronic Handwheels' and machine manualy, as well as position/jog the axis manually, while the DRO's keep track of machine movements. I am using MACH-3, on a fast PEntium, with 2 PAR Port cards. I have set the MPG pinouts to place the X axis MPG on LPT1 (addr = 378) and the Y and Z axes on LPT2. I see the pins toggle on the diagnostic screen. Also the signals are clean, 0.15volt to 4.7volt square waves as the encoder is rotated. I have, to start, simply set the Counts/Unit = 5 and Velocity = 100. The encoders are a 256 pulse per rev on A or B outputs.  After all this is set up, when I set the jog mode to MPG, the X axis (via lpt1) jogs fine, at the selected jog step rate, using MPG-1. the encoder supposedly allocated to the Y axis does nothing, while the Z axis encoder moves the Z axis, but in much smaller step increments. This while the (alt-A) selected axis = X. If I use alt-A to cycle through the selected axes, while on Y , the X axis no longer moves, Y still does not move, Z moves, when Z is selected, No axes move.

What I really would like to achieve is to not use only one MPG, and alt-A cycle thru the active axis, but have all axes 'active' and move when the respective MPG encoder is rotated. But I have not found a combination that works yet.
 I have searched all the posts related to MPG issues, but have not found anything there either.

Any advice gladly accepted.

Thanks
JoNoci

2

LazyCam (Beta) / Using Lazycam to mill Printed Circuit Boards

« on: November 20, 2007, 02:22:50 PM »

Good Day to all. I am trying to use Lazycam to import GERBER (.GBR)  format PCB plot files and then to generate the isolation G-Code file to mill out the copper areas around the PCB tracks, using Mach3.  I cannot seem to get Lazycam do do what I think it should and cannot find any help topics on this subject.  I have tried very simple Gerber plot files to quite complex ones and the behaviour is similarly confusing. Any help would most kindly be appreciated.
Thanks.