Messages

5191

General Mach Discussion / Re: mach3 not downloading

« on: July 31, 2011, 01:54:17 AM »

Hi Sabastion,

Welcome to the forum.

I know the feeling - some mornings I wake up Grumpy, other mornings I let her have a lie-in.

Tweakie.

5192

Mach SDK plugin questions and answers. / Re: Giffin Powermate resurection.

« on: July 31, 2011, 01:39:26 AM »

newmacher,

Thank you for sharing the information and DLL.

Tweakie.

5193

General Mach Discussion / Re: Circuit board isolation routing and probing

« on: July 30, 2011, 01:41:25 AM »

Hi Sage,

I isolation route quite a lot of circuit boards, my work table has a (bolt on) sacrifical top which has been machined flat and parallel - the circuit boards are then held with double sided tape for machining and drilling.
The "extremely simple" boards are held on a vac table with the hole centres just spotted then the holes are drilled manually as a separate process.
The "complex" boards are still acid etched.

Tweakie.

5194

General Mach Discussion / Re: mach3 not downloading

« on: July 30, 2011, 01:26:49 AM »

Sabastion,

Calm down - chill.

There are many here willing to help you in any way that they can.
There are also many thousands of extremely satisfied Mach3 users.
Mach3 serves me well but I accept that it may not suit everyone but if you are prepared to put in a little effort learning then I am sure you will not be disappointed.

Tweakie.

5195

General Mach Discussion / Re: 2nd Parallel Port PCI Card (Recommendations)

« on: July 29, 2011, 12:27:00 PM »

The A25 is a reasonable priced card http://www.cnc4pc.com/Store/osc/product_info.php?products_id=250 from those who understand CNC.

Tweakie.

5196

General Mach Discussion / Re: Computer problem after running mach3

« on: July 29, 2011, 07:58:59 AM »

As you say Nigel - This looks promising 

Tweakie.

5197

General Mach Discussion / Re: Mach3 and Cutting a Circle

« on: July 27, 2011, 01:48:20 AM »

If you are cutting the circle with GCode created from a CAD program then there is a good chance that the circumference consists of many straight lines and depending on the resolution it could be quite rough and lead to the problem you describe.
Try cutting a circle using the Mach wizard which uses circular interpolation, which is as near to a curve as you are going to get, and see if that improves the situation.

Tweakie.

5198

General Mach Discussion / Re: Z axis help

« on: July 26, 2011, 08:18:50 AM »

Sorry Isaac and Sorry Gerry,

 I read the Manual and as I recall, it says that max Z is set to zero and everything else is a negative value but in practice this is not logical. The convention should, in my opinion, follow the way in which we use the machine with positive values as well as negative ones.

I can't help being weird - I was made that way. 

Tweakie.

5199

General Mach Discussion / Re: Gaining steps...maybe? with Servo Drive

« on: July 26, 2011, 07:58:46 AM »

Sorry to say this but if you have had a lightning strike then any of your electronic equipment could be suspect (whether it was actually switched on at the time or not). Any active components within that equipment, logic, transistors etc could have been injured and thus not performing correctly - when components are dead it is perhaps easy to identify a fault but when they are just injured well..........
Unfortunately I think you need to look toward replacing some stuff. 

Tweakie.

5200

General Mach Discussion / Re: Z axis help

« on: July 26, 2011, 05:40:13 AM »

Hi Isaac,

Sorry it is me that is confusing the issue.

My soft limits have Z zero at approx half travel this makes more sense to me as it agrees with work positioning where positive Z is always work clearance.

Tweakie.