Messages

41

General Mach Discussion / Re: Restart after feed hold?

« on: March 02, 2008, 05:23:11 PM »

Thanks for the link - that should help.

42

General Mach Discussion / Restart after feed hold?

« on: March 02, 2008, 02:14:12 AM »

So... I just got all 3 axis connected and running on my Mach3 converted 500mm x 300mm router. Trying some test cuts now. I have a question about feed hold.

Say want to pause a job to inspect the workpiece or to vacuum out the renshape cuttings, or just to stop it from cutting all night. It'd be nice if this happened:

  goto safe z
  stop spindle
  goto predefined position (to make room for vacuum cleaner)

then when I want to restart

  goto previous XY
  start spindle
  resume cutting

Is there any way I can make the feed-hold button automatically do this (and possibly add a resume button to bypass the preparational move dialog you get when cycle-starting)

I guess I've got used to the way my old Roland MDX-20 behaves. If you lift the safety cover it'll stop the spindle and goto safe Z, then you can press the "view" button and it'll goto home (which is x=200 y=150 so you can see what's been happening), pressing view again sends it to 0,0,0 and putting the safety cover back on resumes cutting from wherever it stopped.

PS Test cut 1 succeeded (a back panel for the router with 2x parallel port holes to mount the breakout board and a relay board). Test cut 2 (coarse roughing of renshape) failed due to catastrophic double sided tape failure...
PPS default soft limit zone of 1 is a bit small for metric units

--

Jon
 

43

General Mach Discussion / opto interrupter wiring?

« on: February 23, 2008, 01:46:15 AM »

I'm using Mach3 to bypass the onboard RS232 controller in a chinese router. I hoping to use the existing opto interrupter home switches (as well as the XY drivers, XY steppers etc). The breakout board I have has 10k pullup resistors on the inputs which are wired straight to the port pins.

If I wire up one of the opto interrupters like this:



I can see it working in Mach. But that seems way too simple. Am I going to fry anything if I run it like this?

--

Jon

44

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: New people welcome !! Come in here and introduce your self!

« on: February 21, 2008, 04:56:26 AM »

Hi,

My name's Jon, I'm in New Zealand. Downloaded and registered Mach3 a couple of days ago so I can replace the built-in RS232 controller in a chinese router I picked up second hand. It's about 4 or 5 years old, 500x300 working area, 24000rpm water cooled spindle and has a cast iron frame (weighs 230kg so mechanically it's rock solid). Controller board is pretty primitive though and at 20mm/sec feedrate on renshape you can clearly see where the tool pauses between each goto while the controller figures out the next move (and it's insanely unsmooth at 50mm/sec). I figure I can hook a breakout board straight into the existing XY drivers but I 'm replacing the Z axis stepper and adding a driver since Z seems to be driven directly from the controller board. I'm hoping this will increase my Z axis speed since I have to slow it right down to stop it skipping at the moment.

I have a breakout board, driver and stepper on the way from Australia. I'm also looking forward to smoothstepper so I can use a laptop (I have a PCMCIA parallel port card but I don't think it's going to work)

I've also been running a Roland MDX-20 for a couple of years (to make scale model parts) but it was starting to get a bit small

I also have a lathe which I'd like to retrofit and I can also run that from Mach.