Messages

6221

General Mach Discussion / Re: CAM recommendation, other than CamBam

« on: February 19, 2011, 08:23:50 AM »

Hi Rick,

I worked through most if not all of the Vectric examples some while ago http://www.machsupport.com/forum/index.php/topic,6962.0.html and all the Vectric software is just so easy / quick to learn I was hooked, just needed the money 

There is nothing wrong with CamBam, I have used that a lot in the past but had quite a lot of difficulty learning all it's little wrinkles. I used the free version and Danny at CNC4Free.org http://www.cnc4free.org/ was most helpful resolving problems. There is also a lot of other interesting stuff on his website if you have not seen it already.

Tweakie.

6222

General Mach Discussion / Re: CAM recommendation, other than CamBam

« on: February 19, 2011, 07:51:57 AM »

Rick,

Don't forget about LazyCam - it's free, part of Mach and works extremely well in most instances albeit taking rather a long time with complex files.

It has taken me forever to save up for VCarve Pro. All I can say is that it is worth every penny and well worth waiting for.

Tweakie.

6223

General Mach Discussion / Re: Steppers out of sync and skipped steps?

« on: February 18, 2011, 10:17:33 AM »

Just a suggestion but some pieces of shim formed around a 5mm drill may make the necessary sleeves to fit between your motor shafts and the pulleys.

Tweakie.

6224

General Mach Discussion / Re: Steppers out of sync and skipped steps?

« on: February 18, 2011, 08:31:23 AM »

That's the spirit.
You will succeed and have the finest machine in the end. 

Tweakie.

6225

General Mach Discussion / Re: Steppers out of sync and skipped steps?

« on: February 18, 2011, 07:34:56 AM »

Sorry Dan, I don't wish to cause offense, but it sounds like your build quality may be letting you down.
Unless you get the mechanics perfect (and I mean perfect) then you will not get the machine accuracy you are trying to achieve.

Tweakie.

6226

General Mach Discussion / Re: does mach 3 work with USB?

« on: February 17, 2011, 12:45:02 PM »

guys,
I have a driver board with parallel port and I would like to use USB, so:
is possible to use a parallel port adapter for USB connection and then use MACH4, it will work well?

The USB to Parallel port cables are intended for printers and will not work at present with Mach3.
As mentioned previously the smooth stepper will connect a USB port to driver board with 25 way cannon D connector and work with Mach3. I occasionally use the SS (with one machine only) and am very pleased with it.

Tweakie.

6227

General Mach Discussion / Re: need help conveting hpgl files to work on mach

« on: February 17, 2011, 11:35:08 AM »

Hi Dan,

I will try to answer your questions best I can.

I cut a lot of vinyl on my CNC using a drag knife with 0.5mm tip offset - the corner rounding has never been a problem.

LazyCam - top left click on 'File' where you will see that you can open HPGL and PLT files. Once they have been converted to GCode you can feed them direct to Mach3 for output to your machine or save them as a GCode file.

Target2GCode is available on the 'Majosoft' website (you will have to search for it) http://majosoft.com/ but it sounds like it is the VB runtime components that you are missing and these can be obtained from the Microsoft website http://support.microsoft.com/kb/290887


Tweakie.

6228

General Mach Discussion / Re: Steppers out of sync and skipped steps?

« on: February 17, 2011, 11:01:04 AM »

Hi Dan,

May be an idea to change your design at this stage so you only have two steppers on that axis and a rod joining two pulleys at the other end of the belts. Wiring two steppers in parallel and then slaving them with another pair of steppers wired in parallel will never work well. (The reason relates to the accuracy of microsteps and the difference in the size of each microstep between one motor and the next).
Incidentally, that particular axis is the Y axis and the one with only two steppers is the X axis (this becomes important later on when you may want to use your machine to raster engrave and the axis with the least mass needs to move the fastest).
Good luck with the foil idea, I suppose stranger things have happened. 

Tweakie.

6229

General Mach Discussion / Re: Steppers out of sync and skipped steps?

« on: February 17, 2011, 07:22:27 AM »

Hi Dan,

You are not alone, many peoples have had similar problems.
Knowing just where to start looking is difficult because everybody will have their own ideas but I would suggest that electrical noise could be the cause. Shielded cable for your steppers (grounded at the controller end only) and a grounded metal box for the controller may be a good starting point. Check that you have not created any 'ground loops' in your wiring and that all interconnected electrical equipment is grounded (preferably to one single point).

Just my thoughts so far.

Tweakie.

6230

Show"N"Tell ( What you have made with your CNC machine.) / Re: Gertrude Gets Some!

« on: February 17, 2011, 04:15:15 AM »

Oh go on then I dare you 

(when you have finished how about one of these ? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=939qJdnGLM8&feature=player_embedded)

Tweakie.