Messages

1

General Mach Discussion / Re: Getting a rotary toolpath to show correctly in Mach?

« on: May 28, 2010, 09:03:32 AM »

Hi Chris.
Thanks for the reply. I didn't consider the option that it might be proprietry, so I'm not going to put them on the spot by asking for a copy - I couldn't face the rejection  .
Shame about that though. I'll give the Aqua screenset a trial run 'cos it's a bit cooler on the eyes than the standard offering.

Thanks again.
Martin.

2

General Mach Discussion / Re: Getting a rotary toolpath to show correctly in Mach?

« on: May 27, 2010, 04:30:59 AM »

Will take a look, Hood.
Thanks for your help.

Martin.

3

General Mach Discussion / Re: Getting a rotary toolpath to show correctly in Mach?

« on: May 26, 2010, 05:56:44 PM »

Hi to all.
Assuming Chris hasn't designed and made this himself, does anyone know where I can find the screenset he shows earlier in this thread (reply #11)?
I really like the look of it, as it's much simpler and easier on the eyes than the standard one.

Thanks for any help.
Martin.

4

General Mach Discussion / Re: Strange 4th Axis Problem

« on: May 26, 2010, 05:02:02 AM »

It looks like you got it in 1 there Hood  . I haven't run the milling machine yet, but the axis displays now update as smoothly as usual. While I was about it, I tried the problem file on the laptop, again with the toolpath display disabled and it looks like it's cured the problem there too. This means I can revert back to the laptop as I've got it set up nicely - a great result

Thanks very much for sorting this for me. Get yourself the biggest Haggis you can find and send me the bill.

Thanks again.
Martin.

5

General Mach Discussion / Re: Strange 4th Axis Problem

« on: May 26, 2010, 03:41:52 AM »

Thanks for the reply, Hood.
I'll check it out in the next hour or so. Is there any more info, such as the xml file, needed at the mo'?

Thanks.
Martin.

6

General Mach Discussion / Strange 4th Axis Problem

« on: May 25, 2010, 06:25:01 PM »

Greetings all.
I've just set up my system with a 4th axis and straight away ran into a problem of stuttering movements and pauses of several seconds of the linear and rotary axes. I was using an HP laptop (2.8 ghz) and had been for some time with excellent results, but it seemed like the rotary axis tipped it over the edge, so I've changed to an Athlon 2500xp desktop computer, with separate video card and 1.5gb ram.
Running the same test file as I ran with the laptop, there was an immediate cure to the stuttering rotary/linear axes. What I hadn't done though was swap over the Mach3 license file to the new system, so I was actually running in demo mode with only part of the file being processed. When I did install the license file to the new system and re-ran the test file, which is about 9mb in size and consists of mainly X and A axis moves, all the stuttering returned, but not as severely as with the laptop. Removing the license file eliminates the problem again.
This one's got me stumped. Why would the license file cause this problem, other than allowing a larger g-code file to be used, but I'm not able to see a connection as 9mb (around 500000 lines) isn't that big anyway is it?


Thanks for any help.
Martin.

7

General Mach Discussion / Re: Digiplan SD2

« on: May 04, 2010, 08:51:07 AM »

Hi Sweep.
I've got 3 of the blighters @ £25 apiece.
I'm in Nottingham UK. Contact me if interested.

Martin.

8

General Mach Discussion / Re: Which CAD/CAM software for newbie

« on: May 18, 2009, 06:00:18 PM »

Hi.
I've been using ViaCAD 2D/3D and CamBam together for the last year or so and it's a marriage made in heaven, as far as I'm concerned. ViaCAD is $99 and CamBam is $149, so they're well within your price range, and I think wonderful value for money. ViaCAD does excellent DXF and STL file exports (amongst many others) to CamBam and can switch instantly to a 2D only mode, which is absolutely ideal for drawing the profiles you're going to need for most of your cnc work. Both of these programs are very powerful and both have strong 3D capabilities. The combination has, more or less, caused me to stop using Dolphin Partmaster - which is itself a good piece of software, but probably outside your price bracket.

Cheers.
Martin.

9

General Mach Discussion / Re: What CAD system to use with MACH3 & LazyCam

« on: September 23, 2008, 04:31:52 AM »

I use the following and get great results. ViaCad, which can be found here - http://www.punchcad.com/products/viacad2d3dV6.htm and is simple to use for 2D and 3D work and is very powerful. It cost me about £53 a few months ago. Check out the demo. For Cam software you really cannot beat CamBam, which can be found here - http://www.cambam.co.uk/ and has 2 versions, 1 of which is free and unlimited. I chose the plus version as it is WELL worth what Andy (10bulls) is asking for it.

Let us know how you get on, Martin.

10

General Mach Discussion / Re: circles -- oval shape

« on: September 21, 2007, 07:04:42 PM »

Well the only thing I can think of - and it's a bit of a long shot, is that the X and Y axes aren't at 90 degrees to each other. So a square would be machined into a losenge shape and a circle would be made into an oval. Straight line movement would remain accurate though. Might be worth checking. All the best, Martin.