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Messages - BDF

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1
Mach Screens / Professional M3 GUI Screen Designs
« on: June 18, 2012, 07:15:01 PM »
Hey guys
I'm just getting back into using my CNC mill since a year ago and was reading some of the forums looking for thoughts on the MDA Precision 5-axis Mill. Saw an old post from DaveCVI looking for a professional Graphic Designer to help with their M3 GUI screens.

I'm a professional Graphic Designer. When I first set up my first CNC mill and began using/reading up on M3, I noticed you could custom design the M3 screens. Bad design drives me crazy – – – most men who had to do some grocery shopping may remember back in the early 80's, Prego spaghetti sauce was the only ready made sauce in a jar on the grocery shelf (here is the U.S.) Had no competition. Classico came to our design firm and wanted to put their new sauce on the grocery shelves. Compete with Prego. Prego's labels on the jars looked terrible, unappetizing. Could have sold paint in the jars and you wouldn't have known the difference. For Classico, we first choose a jar that looked like home canning jars. I then designed the labels to make the product look delicious, like it came from a small boutique of sauce makers, mama's house, delivered fresh from Italy yesterday. The immediate result was what we call an industry killer. Or at least until Prego got off their duffs and redesigned their labels. But by that time, sales were evenly split from then on.

Anyway,  in studying the various ways to redesign the M3 screens, I began playing around with some design techniques. The attached is just a smidgen of what I was planning on doing. I then got so busy with work that I haven't been able to touch my mill for over a year.

Designing a complete, professionally designed set of GUI screens that would set a new standard in the industry would take months of planning, design reviews, interactive/testing, a sizable investment to reap rewards down the road, etc. The unique position that I'm in is that I am a very good designer..... AND..... an amateur machinist that has a basic understanding of how a machinist and CNC works. Smooth project flow. Would never be able to please all users. But that's what's cool about M3. You can customize it to make it your own.

I'd like to think I could finish out my screens, but I've got to focus on finding some land out here in west Dallas and design a house to be built on it. One day soon!

Bruce
www.bdfdesignstudio.4ormat.com




2
Hey guys. It was operator error. My part did move ever so slightly. Part of the learning process.
My A2Z mill XY movement is dead on perpendicular to each other. I've got precisionitus/squareness on the brain right now trying to figure all of this out.
Thanks.

3
Hello everyone
I've got a question. I'm trying to cut the 4 sides of a 5" x 5" x .5" alumin
plate to be perfectly square on my CNC A2Z mill.

I've placed a slightly smaller piece of 1/2" MDF on my table, my aluminum plate
on top of that and I've run a t-nut/bolt right down the middle to clamp to the
table (my next MOP is to cut out a 4" hole in the middle of the 5" plate). My XY
part "0" point is the plate front left corner with lead in/lead out set as I'm
only cutting .0020 of each side one side at a time. I'm moving around the plate
in a clockwise direction. When I finish cutting all 4 sides, I checked for the
sides to be square. They're not.

Is the built in error of the XY table movement not being 90 deg. to each other
just the way it is or is there a way to account for this in M3 by having the CNC
capability to program the errors out? In setting up M3 and in the process of
squaring up the mill do you program M3 to shift over whatever amount it is out
of square over a certain distance of any XY direction of travel?

If so, where and how do you do this?

Thanks
Bruce


4
SmoothStepper USB / Re: New CNC member – – Mach3 crashes/unstable
« on: January 05, 2011, 02:05:58 AM »
Hey guys
Thanks for the advise. Jeff at Soigeneris is helping me quite a bit. The holidays have spread everything out. I'm hoping to get the steppers moving moving the tables this weekend and then start to concentrate on how to use CamBam/Mach3.
B

5
SmoothStepper USB / New CNC member – – Mach3 crashes/unstable
« on: December 31, 2010, 02:56:14 AM »
Hello everyone.
New member and new to CNC. Been using a Sherline 2000 Mill and Lathe for last 4 years. Just bought the A2Z Monster Mill setup, Jeffery's Smoothstepper, Mach3 and converting my Sherline Lathe to CNC too. Leaving the Mill alone.

I have two things working against me. I'm a Mac guru. I know nothing about the PC. And I know very little about CNC. I'm already about to throw my brother's old IBM Thinkpad out the window. My bother is the PC guru. He is the person installing the drivers, plugins and optimizing the setup, checking all the power settings, etc. I can only ask, did you do this, how about that....

I've assembled everything. Disassembeled everything – because I can't get my steppers to work for more than 5 minutes to make sure everything is operating smoothly, no binding, etc. before I bolt and lock everything back together.

Here is my first problem:
For now, I just have the Thinkpad laptop sitting on top of the SS, one motor connected to the SS X-axis port (I've connected the other two and have gotten all 3 to briefly work), USB connected from SS to PC (I'm not using a parallel ribbon/port – so therefore, none of the port and pin config settings and parallel port optimization instructions needs changing, correct???), only the SS is connected to AC (line filter not connected as the Sherline spindle motor is not connected).

Now, when I launch M3, select Jeffery's custom profile, I sometimes get a dialog box to choose a motion device (SS here), sometimes get a message that no steppers were found, and another dialog box with info about Spindle-axis Step Port/Dir Pin – – if steppers found, I let M3 launch. If no steppers were found,  I quit M3, unplug the USB cable and relaunch M3.

So, without touching anything, M3 is on, reset button flashing. Now, about 75% of the time, I move the mouse to reset and the reset button will go all red (no flashing) before I get there, and as soon as I click the mouse on the reset button, the screen goes transparent/whites out and the mouse pointer turns into a spinning torus. M3 is locked up.

Now, though a combination of turning the SS on and off, unplugging/reconnecting cables, rebooting, moving all cables and power around and away from each other because there is stuff I'm reading about noise, a quick dance to the gods, a little pacing, opening the garage door to steal a smoke, and, every once in a while, I can get the reset button to reset, hit tab to bring out the jog fly-out window and get the motors to sing and the DROs to spin.

So, before something melts, I quickly bolt the mill motor to the lathe x-axis table, which is oiled and gibbed, ready to go, ready to see the stepper work. Nothing. M3 is locked up.

I can get everything working again and stop jogging, walk away and come back in 10 min. and M3 will be locked up

Any suggestions on what's going on? Something is not talking to something or is losing comms – –

__________

A couple of follow up questions:

1.  Is anyone on the forum in the Dallas/Fort Worth area for support?
2. Is anyone using the ZBot jog wheel device and can enlighten me how to set up and get this to work too?
3. Jeffery, does the long power cord on the Line filter box go into the back of the SS and the short power cord end/switch box plug into the Sheline motor and the LF junction switch box needs to be mounted as close to the Z-axis/spindle motor as possible?

Thanks,
Bruce

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