Messages

1

General Mach Discussion / Re: Newbie to Mach 3

« on: August 16, 2014, 04:57:56 AM »

Well I bought one of these 6040 chinese pieces of crap. Took me a few months to work some things out. Anyway on to my problem. I am either getting confused or missing something wihen it comes to setting my z axis. Ok I can set up my fixtures just fine. I don't have limit switches yet or a touch probe. So I am doing this all manually right now. so I run my axis all to the negative such as x0y0 and z0 which is to the top of the stroke. Now another issue I am having is the native units when I first set the machine up I set it to inches but the DRO has always read out in mm. Could someone go through step by step on how to set my z so I wont crash my z axis. If anyone is near the Houston area or Beaumont area that would be help ful. Oh and yes I have watched the videos on homing and switches.

Thanks
Jason

Native units are for set up only, nothing to do with what mc DRO's are reading, so if the native units and data are set correctly it's best to leave them alone.

I have one (well 87.%) of a Chinese pants mc, blame Pang :v or at least that was who sold mine

with no ref switches you cant reference the mc, however that's not a problem, just move the mc to your program zero,  then zero out each axis by clicking on the "x", "Y" and "Z" DRO's, or click on each figure in each DRO and then enter the figure that you require it to register.

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General Mach Discussion / Re: Losing Y position erratically

« on: August 16, 2014, 04:23:17 AM »

Good point DoubleTrouble - is the existing fan operating correctly and efficiently ??

Tweakie.

Thanks it also looks like there is an 'amount' of guitar dust inside the box, built up on the rear vent and cables etc, a can of compressed air is you friend for ridding this problem.

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General Mach Discussion / Re: Losing Y position erratically

« on: August 16, 2014, 03:45:47 AM »

Well, it looks to me like the existing fan is more than adequate to do the job so I don't think adding another fan would serve any useful purpose. I assume that the board closest to the fan is your Z axis and the two slo-syn's are your X an Y ??

Tweakie.

It sure 'looks like' a fan, but has it been seen running under power? I've had two fans go down from China (well one gone and the other sounding like it's dying fast :v )

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General Mach Discussion / Re: 3rd Axis in Mach3 Z. I need it as angular.... How to

« on: August 05, 2014, 04:36:27 PM »

try

G00 G90 Z360
G92 Z0.0

5

General Mach Discussion / Re: Thunderbird 5 main engines help?

« on: June 14, 2014, 08:17:50 AM »

Try reducing the acceleration and velocity by 10% and see if that helps.
Hood

Thank you Hood, sadly though it didn't solve the issue, however I've just run the same program 200 times, the mc DRO ended up 90mm out, but the part is correct and the physical position of the mc is correct to Mach3....so I'm just gonna ignore the mc DRO for now and crack on test machining

Thanks for the advice though Phil.

6

General Mach Discussion / Re: Thunderbird 5 main engines help?

« on: June 12, 2014, 06:46:43 AM »

I don't have an answer for your DRO problems as I am very (old) new to CNC programming, however I remember form my Nephew's Factory, they used to use neat car anti-freeze in their Spindle Cooling Plants as this would work extremely well as a coolant and a rust inhibitor and would also act as  act as a dye indicating in detecting any leaks.

Thanks Buggalugs, anti freeze sounds like a good plan, I machined spindles like this subcontracting at Westwings Airbearings, spent most the time on the grinding section, but never paid attention as to what the customer was running in the spindles, silly me lol

ok, back to reading a zillion pages to work out why the Y is losing position

7

General Mach Discussion / Thunderbird 5 main engines help?

« on: June 11, 2014, 04:18:45 PM »

Sorry for the tittle but I've always named the cnc's I'm working on, and I've named this little bad boy Thunderbird 5

Its a Chinese made HY~TB5 5 axis engrave/mill, with 400x300x150mm machining window, manufactured by the "Nowforever" Company.

on the pc side of things......

I've got an old retired pc out of the loft because it had an onboard 25 pin printer port, loaded a new OS, OEM copy of Windows 2000 pro, installed Mach3 with new licence, run the Mach3 driver test  and the system checks out fine.

I've then hooked up to the machine and started my configuration, problem is I don't understand the Chinese in places, if you know what I mean!!!

The EOM claimed it runs on Mach3, and it clearly does, I have control of all 5 axis, in Program/MDI/Manual.

I've done a few test programs and the first problem I need to resolve is that the Y Axis is losing position from the mc DRO and the Mach3 DRO, I programmed a square and the DRO's hold true to the micron, unless I address a Z movement during the X and Y movement, this makes the machine DRO read incorrectly, its also losing mc DRO position in the Y only during G02, but not by much.

Has anyone else set one of these machines up with Mach3? the info with the machine has some of the mach3 data in terms of screen shots, but some screen shots of the set up are missing, namely some of the Input/output Signals?

Also the spindle is water cooled, do you guys add any rust inhibitors to the tank?

Many thanks, Phil.

8

General Mach Discussion / Re: Hall of shame

« on: May 22, 2014, 03:45:27 PM »

Thank you Tweakie, I'll let her know to pick the licence up when she gets home in a couple of hrs


could you point me to the correct section to get some support for connecting pc/mc/Mach3.....I haz a Chinise one lol mc that is I'm well used to very large cnc's, but never had a baby one that you need to first breath life into

Thanks, Phil.

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General Mach Discussion / Re: Hall of shame

« on: May 22, 2014, 09:26:17 AM »

Hi Tweakie, ok as I explained on the intro thread my lovely gf has bought a mc that needs a licence, I'm in the uk, at the mo the gf is on the dark side of the pond   but moving to the uk soon (end of year), I spoke to her this morning and she has found a licence on the Artsoft site, she has it in the basket but we need to confirm a couple of points first.

At the mo we are home hobbyists at best, I am a cnc miller turner grinder by trade, the gf is not lolz, from the one licence we would like her to be able to play with the software offline in the USA (unlocked), while the working copy connected to mc is here in the uk, we have both down loaded the demo, last night via Skype I gave her a basic walk thro of the demo and had her altering code, so I know she will need Mach3 unlocked so she can keep up with what I'm doing here....fingers crossed lmao

So my long winded question is can we have the program on both sides of the Atlantic, uk side connected to the mc, USA side only connected for training?

regards, Phil.

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Mach4 General Discussion / Re: New people welcome !! Come in here and introduce your self!

« on: May 21, 2014, 06:43:11 AM »

Hi all, I found the forum after my lovely but crazy gf bought a little 5 axis table top mill from......yes.....China not one to argue I am now tasked with linking this mill up to Mach3 and then machining whatever crazy ideas she may have next

I don't think there is a mach3 licence with the mc, so that will need to be resolved, a desk top pc is on its way at some point this week, think the gf got windows 7 on it? not sure, but all will come out in the wash.

I'm a retired cnc miller turner grinder, Aerospace, F1, MOD, all the normal suspects in UK subcontract machining, so more used to a 5 axis twin pallet Mazak with at least 40 tools than a small big boys toy, but it does look fun

Anyway, I'm sure I'll have a bunch of questions coming up so thought I'd say hello first

Regards, Phil.