Messages

1

General Mach Discussion / Re: Auto Zero Plate/Ports and Pins

« on: October 15, 2015, 08:20:46 AM »

Thanks guys.

2

General Mach Discussion / Auto Zero Plate/Ports and Pins

« on: October 14, 2015, 03:20:35 PM »

My machine came with a wired touch plate (or offset block).  I've had the machine for 9 months now, and never bothered to try to set it up because it would activate the E-stop whenever contacted.  I've just been zeroing Z the old fashioned way.  I decided it would be nice if it worked and have been doing some searching.  There are a couple of good YouTube videos explaining the setup, and I tried to follow that process.  The first thing I noticed was that the PIN# for both the E-Stop and Probe is 10.  That would make sense with the probe behaving like the E-Stop switches.  I'm not sure why it would be installed that way, though.

I downloaded the Auto Zero programming text that was attached to one of the videos (and seems to be available many other places).  It works until the contact is made.

Is it safe to assume that I need to rewire the touch plate to another PIN# on the breakout board to isolate it from the E-stop circuit?
    

3

General Mach Discussion / Re: Why is this happening at higher feed rates?

« on: June 08, 2015, 10:38:06 PM »

I went home and ran a program under no load, and the issue was still present.  I even ran the code in Mach3 with the machine off and ob :)served the shift in the DROs.

I then started studying the gcode.  I discovered that these offsets were in the gcode, and each corner approach involves over 30 lines of code.  So, it appears the machine is just doing what the code is telling it to do, but why is the gcode doing this?

4

General Mach Discussion / Re: Why is this happening at higher feed rates?

« on: June 08, 2015, 03:01:18 PM »

BR549 - The correct cut is the line before the shift goes inside the boundary before the turn.  The shift occurs just before the turn going CW, not after.

Chaoticone - I'll have to check on the backlash comp

5

General Mach Discussion / Re: Why is this happening at higher feed rates?

« on: June 07, 2015, 09:52:30 PM »

I'm using steppers.

The cut was CW.

The faster the cut, the worse it gets.

The velocity and acceleration are the sane for both axes.

I have not set any CV settings.

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General Mach Discussion / Why is this happening at higher feed rates?

« on: June 07, 2015, 06:35:10 PM »

The effect in the photo occurs at 300 ipm and lessens as I slow the feed rate.  I have to slow the feed rate down to 50 ipm before I can get acceptable, clean corners, but that's just way too slow.

Sorry if this has already been discussed at length.  I just wasn't sure what keywords to search for.

7

General Mach Discussion / Re: Spindle Controls

« on: April 14, 2015, 03:39:45 PM »

Ok, thanks Gerry.  I misunderstood what you were saying.

8

General Mach Discussion / How do you have your CNC accessories wired? (Dust collections, vacuum, ect?)

« on: April 14, 2015, 10:00:09 AM »

I'm still working toward getting my setup to be user-friendly, and I was wondering how everyone has their various accessories setup to be controlled when starting/ending a job.  I will eventually have a dust collector, spindle cooling pump, vacuum system, misting system, and probably another thing or two that I haven't even considered yet.  I won't be using all of these things all of the time, so I can't combine them into a single switch.  I was curious if anyone uses Mach to control anything besides a misting system?  I had been worrying about forgetting to plug in the spindle cooling pump, but I soon found out that the spindle won't even rev up without the pump being on.  That was a relief.

It's a slight inconvenience to run around switching things on and off.  It would just be nice to stand in one spot and be able to control everything

9

General Mach Discussion / Re: Spindle Controls

« on: April 14, 2015, 09:41:05 AM »

I delayed my CW delay by 5 seconds and checked in the "turn off spindle" at M30, and it worked perfectly.  Two problems solved.

Should I still get in the habit of putting an M5 in my g-code manually as backup?

10

General Mach Discussion / Re: Spindle Controls

« on: April 13, 2015, 10:04:57 AM »

Thanks, Rich.  I found the "turn off spindle" in Mach and checked the box.  I opened a file to see if it would add an M5 at the end, but it didn't.  I haven't run a program, so I wasn't sure it that was the fix or not.

I should be good to go with my spindle start delay and stop at the end.