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Messages - tomsenior1

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Hi All, my forum name is tom senior, which is the old machine I have just converted to cnc control.

I am 62 years old, been employed in radio communications since the age of 15. Never done any mechanical engineering bar bash out a few designes for radio cabinets, so it is a steep learning curve, and as ever the first step is jargon busting.

I bought stepper motors, stepper micro controllers and ball screws from Zapp, and Gary was very helpful. The machine conversion was straight forward with the exception of the Z axis. On the tom senior the whole table moves to give Z, and it is very heavy. At this time I have used a larger stepper motor for Z and a counter balance weight to lighten the burden. The redial accuracy in all axis is as good as the ball screws >= 0.05mm, so I am quite happy with the resulting machine, but in the long term I think I will add a DC motor as a spindle drive and make a new slide, to turn the top of the machine into a quill, and use the old table adjustment as a "manually adjusted large gap".
I made my first post here (answered by HOOD), very helpful.
cheers all

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General Mach Discussion / Re: machine Config
« on: August 15, 2010, 12:42:41 PM »
Ok, all understood, will take a look in the folders later. I have not created any custom configs, so I guess the files will be in the default names which you have kindly given.

I downloaded the freebe just to get the machine calibrated and fee of bugs, plus climb the learning curve.
I am quite impressed and it works with the Gcode our panel design software chucks out as a bonus.
So next is to tidy up the wiring and make a push button interface to use when CAM not required, then reinstall mach3

Thank you for your help Hood
cheers
TomSenior

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General Mach Discussion / Re: machine Config
« on: August 15, 2010, 05:26:13 AM »
Hi Hood
thanks for the update. I am new to mechanical engineering hence joining the forum.
Do you know which files to save ? the reason for asking is that I have to rebuild the PC and would find it easier to reload mach3 and then replace the config file, or as you say xml file.

cheers
TomSenior

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General Mach Discussion / machine Config
« on: August 15, 2010, 04:02:23 AM »
I read in the “DID YOU KNOW” section of the forum that the only way to save your machine settings or config is to do screen shots and save them as a graphic.

This seems a little backwards, surely there is a way of saving the config ? if not then a facility to do so should be a prime candidate for desired features.

I have just converted an old Tom Senior miller to CNC and spent some time calibrating and tuning the system, hence the question.

Does anyone know if the mach3 settings are stored in a single file ?

Cheers all

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