Messages

7161

General Mach Discussion / Re: Spindle no longer crashes Mach3, but doens't stay on...

« on: February 22, 2010, 09:04:59 AM »

Sorry Glen, can't help with this one - Its outside the realms of my personal experience. 
Somebody will know the answer to this.

Tweakie.

7162

General Mach Discussion / Re: Spindle no longer crashes Mach3, but doens't stay on...

« on: February 21, 2010, 11:06:31 AM »

Hi Glen,

Difficult to tell without looking at your installation.

The casing of my VFD (the heatsink) is bolted directly to my machine frame and is therefore grounded by this fixing so the incoming supply to it does not contain a ground connection. The output from the VFD is made with shielded cable, grounded at the VFD end but not at the motor end but the motor is itself grounded by being bolted to the machine frame. My machine frame and the computer casing are the only parts which are directly connected to earth protective ground and the screen of the LPT cable does not connect the two parts. So everything is ultimately connected to ground without loops and all works well.

Hope this helps,

Tweakie.

7163

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

« on: February 20, 2010, 02:43:55 AM »

Nice one Chris - Gecko's rule. 

Tweakie.

7164

Share Your GCode / Re: GCode Sharing

« on: February 20, 2010, 02:36:29 AM »

Come on Robert - Don't give up that easily.
Building your own machine was the hardest part - It's all plain sailing from now on.

You could try finding some DXF's that you like from this thread on the Zone http://www.cnczone.com/forums/showthread.php?t=19346 then using LazyCam create the GCode and start engraving stuff. Before you know it, your wife will be complaining that you have far too many place mats and coasters. 

Tweakie.

btw. You are certainly not the oldest guy who is just starting out on the world of CNC.

7165

Share Your GCode / Re: GCode Sharing

« on: February 19, 2010, 03:41:12 AM »

Hi Robert,

A bit of extra info. You can download the LazyCam manual from the members documents section here http://www.machsupport.com/forum/index.php/topic,12078.0.html

Tweakie

7166

Show"N"Tell ( What you have made with your CNC machine.) / Re: 'No Moon' Series

« on: February 19, 2010, 02:53:19 AM »

Great work Barry - I hope the show is a resounding success.

Tweakie.

7167

Share Your GCode / Re: GCode Sharing

« on: February 19, 2010, 02:46:36 AM »

Hi Robert,

As you already have LazyCam as part of the Mach install this would be a good place to start. It is not perfect and still has a few little quirks but once you have learned to use it you should be able to achieve excellent results at converting DXF to GCode.
The Mach1filter (mentioned earlier in this thread) is also a good starting point for creating height / depth maps and would make a brilliant job of creating the G2T2 file (you have just cut) from a bitmap image.
The great advantage of these programs is the zero cost aspect and when your knowledge starts to exceed the programs capabilities you could then progress to more advanced (and more expensive) software. In other words, don't buy anything until you know exactly what you need.

Tweakie.

7168

Share Your GCode / Re: GCode Sharing

« on: February 18, 2010, 04:47:34 AM »

Here is another one for you. I haven't tried cutting this one yet as it was just an experiment to try 'BMP Bender'.

The .TIF was downloaded from the 'Majosoft' website and saved as a .BMP then converted to an .STL using the free program 'BMP Bender'. The GCode toolpath was created with the trial version of 'DeskProto'.

Looking at the Mach window display of the work shows the limitations of resolution associated with BMP Bender but as the steps are quite shallow these should be reduced in the cutting and may not even be noticeable in the finished work. As I said earlier, this is an experiment, perhaps someone would like to cut it and post their results.

Tweakie.

7169

General Mach Discussion / Re: Rotary axis zeroing problem

« on: February 17, 2010, 07:46:48 AM »

Looks like you have solved the mystery Russ. 

Tweakie.

7170

General Mach Discussion / Re: Rotary axis zeroing problem

« on: February 17, 2010, 05:15:36 AM »

Hi Al,

Just tried your code and same thing - works fine first run only. (It seems that it wants to rewind the A axis back to zero but very slowly on the second run).

Tweakie.