Messages

7101

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

« on: February 21, 2011, 03:04:12 AM »

Spot on Guys, right on all counts, money's all gone, be lucky if I can affort the wood to make another tiger anyway    

I think Hood summed it up when he said that the software depends on the type of parts you wish to produce. I think VCarve is great for a router making wood or plastic parts but I don't think it would be my first choice for a milling machine making metal parts. It is perhaps all a matter of personal choice and making the best from what you have.

Tweakie.

7102

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

« on: February 20, 2011, 08:27:43 AM »

I just got some 1/32" router bits, so I may need to cut another one. Smiley

You still wont get as much detail as I got 

Tweakie.

7103

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

« on: February 20, 2011, 08:11:51 AM »

This is 2.5D really but quite a few of us made these with 3 axis machines last year.

Tweakie.

7104

General Mach Discussion / Re: Mach3 motion control over two LPT ports?

« on: February 20, 2011, 07:16:27 AM »

Hi Brad,

I use a seperate 'stand alone' psu and controller for my 4th axis which connects to a second PCI card configured as LPT2. Mach has no problem with sharing the tasks between ports #1 and #2.

Tweakie.

7105

General Mach Discussion / Re: Need help with basic understanding

« on: February 20, 2011, 03:30:28 AM »

Dan,

The glitch top left is usually caused when the object vectors are not joined (LazyCam takes the shortest route to the next vector).

What did the whole thing look like on the LazyCam screen ?
Did it show these errors ?

Tweakie.

7106

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.

7107

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.

7108

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.

7109

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.

7110

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.