Messages

6761

General Mach Discussion / Mach Screen Question.

« on: July 12, 2011, 08:26:48 AM »

I suppose I should know the answer to this but I don't. 

What is the significance of the green rectangle surrounding the Cycle Start button and why does it sometimes flash on / off during the last few lines of a program ?

Thanks,

Tweakie.

6762

Show"N"Tell ( Your Machines) / Re: The Laser Project.

« on: July 12, 2011, 06:23:19 AM »

Again using the impact/laser engraving plugin some quite stunning results can be had with ceramic tiles. The laser produces micro-fractures in the surface of the glaze which are subsequently filled with a dye. This was one of my first attempts, using some left over’s from a tiling job, it’s not bad but I still have a long way to go before achieving results that I am fully satisfied with. Tiles marked this way are much more durable than I had first thought, they may fade with time but washing and cleaning have no effect on the dye once it has penetrated the surface.

In a way this serves to illustrate the stupidity of our patent system. Using a laser to mark the surface of ceramic tiles has been patented and technically I am not allowed to make or experiment with making such things as this (my comments will be written on the piece of paper which will be passed to the clerk of the court). And as you would expect it is not just limited to tiles – marking house bricks with a laser and marking Denim jeans with a laser have also been patented although half of Asia seems to be marking Denim with dis-regard to any patents. The list just goes on and on to the extent that I am surprised that a patent has not already been granted for just switching a laser on at the wall outlet.
I know that drug companies have been accused of patenting compounds and formulae they have no intention of using just to prevent a competitors research.

How, I wonder, would we all get on if a patent had been granted for machining a piece of material with a CNC machine ?
Not that much different in principle from marking a ceramic tile using a laser is it ?

Tweakie.

6763

General Mach Discussion / Re: Lost Steps

« on: July 10, 2011, 06:03:14 AM »

Glad you have a sense of humour S 


Tweakie.

6764

Tangent Corner / Re: Ooops !

« on: July 08, 2011, 01:07:20 PM »

Hi Mikee,

Don't worry about a thing - there is nothing that can't be sorted.

Have you worked out how to do it now ?

Tweakie.

6765

General Mach Discussion / Re: Noisy Axis problem.

« on: July 08, 2011, 12:50:12 PM »

Just from memory because it is a long while since I looked at the Xylotex instructions but if it has a PFD (percent fast decay) pot (adjacent to the current adjust pot) associated with each axis you could try a slight adjustment of this on the axis that is causing trouble.

Tweakie.

6766

Third party software and hardware support forums. / Re: Mach3 and Toshiba VFD spindle control question and some Help needed.

« on: July 08, 2011, 11:13:08 AM »

Take a look at Chris Humphris document here http://www.cjh.com.au//PWM%20Spindle%20Control%20using%20Mach3.pdf it contains a lot of useful information.

Tweakie.

6767

General Mach Discussion / DC-03 DigiSpeed GX V3

« on: July 08, 2011, 02:47:01 AM »

Darcy,

This is a pretty old thread but it is straightforward enough to connect the analog 0-5Volts to the laser PSU and it is again straightforward to setup the spindle control within Mach to output the PWM (do a search for PWM and you will find the details). This works just fine for vector cutting but if you decide to do raster work using the Impact/Laser Engraver plugin it all goes pear shaped.
There are more details in these threads (if you have a bit of time to spare  );

http://www.machsupport.com/forum/index.php/topic,16446.0.html

http://www.machsupport.com/forum/index.php/topic,12444.0.html

Hope this helps,

Tweakie.

6768

Tangent Corner / Re: Ooops !

« on: July 08, 2011, 02:35:40 AM »

Mikee,

Shielded cable is best to use for limit switches and only ground the shield (screen) at the controller end.

Tweakie.

6769

General Mach Discussion / Re: Lost Steps

« on: July 07, 2011, 07:22:27 AM »

Hi Stefan,

Don't know if this helps but I couldn’t get anything, error wise, from your crossover file so went back to look at your earlier files.
I am trying to understand your “surfboard file top” and “surfboard file bottom” but the conventions used are rather unusual, at least for my machine.
You seem to have the X axis as the long axis and Z zero at the bottom of the work rather than the top. The final GCode lines of taking Z to zero, switching off the spindle then returning to X0, Y0 would break my cutter but you seem to have your Z axis reversed.
By convention +Z is usually upward (away from the work) and –Z is downward (towards the work).
I ran this file 4 times without error (just cutting air). I had to exchange the X and Y axis in the code so it would fit my machine table (the Y axis is usually the long axis by convention) and scale it down a bit but other than that it ran OK and my machine returned exactly to Z zero each time (using feeler gauges to check).
The GCode compilation is generally weird particularly with the jumping feed rates from F200 to F13000 for no good reason and there is a small Z axis glitch halfway along the long axis in both directions which I cannot understand so I would only score this 4 out of 10 for nice GCode to use.

Tweakie.

6770

General Mach Discussion / Re: when motors reverse, they stall then slowly pick up speed. HELP!

« on: July 07, 2011, 03:47:16 AM »

Vincent,

Try increasing your acceleration from 5 to 16 and save the settings then try again and see what happens.

Tweakie.