Messages

7541

Show"N"Tell ( What you have made with your CNC machine.) / Re: Very small parts, smallest possible engravings.

« on: November 15, 2010, 05:10:22 AM »

If any of you had any experience with small scale engraving please respond.

Excellent work Glad. Real neat job.

Although not really relevant to rotary engraving I am trying to produce a small checkers board. I am cheating a bit by using a laser but so far with an 8 x 8 matrix I am down to 0.5mm x 0.5mm. These were the initial tests with a 14 x 14 matrix and the smallest here is 1.25mm x 1.25mm. The problem is photographing the result, looks like I will have to invest in one of those USB microscopes 

Tweakie.

7542

Show"N"Tell ( What you have made with your CNC machine.) / Re: Very small parts of another kind

« on: November 15, 2010, 04:03:53 AM »

More than surprising Mike that is just excellent.

Which software did you use to create the raster toolpath from your image please ?

Tweakie.

7543

Mach SDK plugin questions and answers. / Re: Impact engraving plugin

« on: November 15, 2010, 03:04:38 AM »

Art,

Thank you for the information. I must admit to not fully understanding how the dots are generated but perhaps it will become clearer after more thought. One thing that I had not considered is that the banding is created from the X step info - I had, mistakenly, thought that if it was software related it would have been related to the Y axis stepover.

You have given me an avenue to investigate regarding care in the initial image sizing and pixel count rather than just taking an image and scaling to fit at the last moment.

I will experiment with the grayscale issue a bit more but so far I have only been able to resolve, at any one time, 5 shades out of a possible 8. So I need to discover just why I am getting such a large step size so that I cannot see more than 8 shades. http://www.cooperman.talktalk.net/grayscale1.bmp

There has to be a solution to this "banding" and I just hope that I find it sooner rather than later. 

Tweakie.

7544

Mach SDK plugin questions and answers. / Re: Impact engraving plugin

« on: November 14, 2010, 11:32:17 AM »

Hi Art,

I understand what you say and the effect is demonstrated in the background of this image http://www.machsupport.com/forum/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=12444.0;attach=23043;image . The background gradient contains more shades than the 8 available from the plugin so it is split into the nearest match and thus the bands which only affect the background and not the foreground.

What I am trying to resolve is, I think, different and can best be seen in this image http://www.cooperman.talktalk.net/files/27_files/image762.jpg which is purely monochrome with no shades of gray.
I can produce a number of identical images, one at a time, side by side on the same material and with exactly the same settings yet the banding pattern, across the whole image, is different between each image.

Grateful of any additional thoughts you may have on this one.

Tweakie.

7545

Mach SDK plugin questions and answers. / Re: Impact engraving plugin

« on: November 14, 2010, 03:53:23 AM »

Excellent work Obal.

I am having a problem with "banding" (horizontal bands of differing contrast) please look at this image http://www.cooperman.talktalk.net/files/27_files/image762.jpg

On one of your images it looks like you have the same problem - Is this the case ?

Tweakie.

7546

Show"N"Tell ( Your Machines) / Re: AL54b (lathe) project from New Zealand

« on: November 12, 2010, 05:56:35 AM »

Sorry to be a pain, I said I didn't know much about lathes.
Thanks guys.

Tweakie.

7547

Show"N"Tell ( Your Machines) / Re: AL54b (lathe) project from New Zealand

« on: November 12, 2010, 04:43:21 AM »

Sorry, my mistake. 
I thought you were using that blue coloured ac motor with belt drive for your headstock (as shown in the earlier pictures).

Tweakie.

7548

FAQs / Re: Pulsing too fast

« on: November 12, 2010, 02:41:36 AM »

Aawills,

I suggest that you check 'Config / Ports & Pins' that you actually do have kernel speed set to 25000. There is seldom any need to go higher than this.

Tweakie.

7549

Show"N"Tell ( Your Machines) / Re: AL54b (lathe) project from New Zealand

« on: November 12, 2010, 02:28:30 AM »

* I hope the ball screw has the same pitch as the lead-screw you are replacing, because the back-gearing is designed to work with the lead screw to get all the thread combination's. As this is very unlikely to be the case, you may have an interesting time getting the thread cutting going. Good luck.

Not sure why id keep any of that junk, the computer will cut the threads not the bucket of gears and crappy lead screw (only has about 3mm of backlash - I must have got a good one)

I must admit that I don't know much about lathes but I will be extremely interested to see just how this pans out.   

Tweakie.

7550

General Mach Discussion / Re: Motors work right when windows starts up and then stop after a minute or two

« on: November 11, 2010, 11:57:23 AM »

dlbjcksn,

Is anything getting hot ?

Tweakie.