Messages

241

General Mach Discussion / Re: Slave Axis Homing

« on: July 06, 2010, 05:39:49 PM »

The only reason to have two home switches on the slaved axis is to "Auto square the Axis"

To do this, each of the home switches must have its own input.

If not, then the extra home switch is of no use.

In your pic. Y and A share an input.

Greg

EDIT:  If you wanted to, X and Z homes could share an input which would free one to use for A.

242

Finished Plugins for Download / Re: Webcam plugin with low CPU consumption

« on: July 06, 2010, 06:04:26 AM »

Thank you very much Klaus.

Greg

243

Finished Plugins for Download / Re: Webcam plugin with low CPU consumption

« on: July 04, 2010, 10:59:49 PM »

Klaus

I have been using your video plugin since you first released it here.

Have not updated for a while and have done so now.  V2.08.1

Very good to have the control separate to the main window.

However the "Remember Window Position" is not working for me anymore.

It remembers the width of the window but forgets the height.

Greg

244

General Mach Discussion / Re: My 4th Axis

« on: July 03, 2010, 08:14:15 PM »

I 'just' need to sort out the CAM and start some serious chomping.

That looks great Derek.

The best price wise, real 4th axis CAM that I have found is DeskProto.

They have just introduced special hobby pricing for their full version.  248 euro.  Worth looking at.  30 day trial version.

Then there is the poor man's option of Wrapping XYZ toolpaths. 

A lot can be  done with this method but it is not REAL 4th axis CAM.

CNCWrapper is an excellent utility for this.   http://www.cncwrapper.com/

Greg

245

General Mach Discussion / Re: Mach 3 and 4th Axis

« on: July 03, 2010, 03:34:41 AM »

Jim

I have been away from the computer for a day or so.  Glad to see you are starting to get a handle on the "Wrapping" idea.

CNCWrapper has a pretty good help file.

Here is a screen grab of the Design Size Calculator which may be helpful to grasp wrapping layout and direction.

Greg

246

General Mach Discussion / Re: Mach 3 and 4th Axis

« on: July 02, 2010, 02:40:00 AM »

That just means that you did not arrange it correctly when producing the original code in your CAM program.

Greg

247

General Mach Discussion / Re: Mach 3 and 4th Axis

« on: July 02, 2010, 01:47:56 AM »

OK I had a look at your code.  I can see nothing wrong with it.

However you chose the worst letter to use as a test.  Capital M looks the same backwards.  Even upside down it looks like a W.

Try doing something more meaningful than the letter M.  Like the word "Text" for example. 

Greg

248

General Mach Discussion / Re: Mach 3 and 4th Axis

« on: July 02, 2010, 01:38:25 AM »

Jim

Post the gcode that you are wanting to wrap and I will take a look.

Greg

249

General Mach Discussion / Re: Mach 3 and 4th Axis

« on: July 02, 2010, 01:23:27 AM »

I had thought that the CNCwrapper would have taken care of the orientation of the (Letter in my case) and how it is positioned on the wraparound on the cylinder.

Here is am example.  Simple lettering wrapped with CNCWrapper.

Orientation correct, positioned how I intended, no problems.  All in few seconds.

Greg

250

General Mach Discussion / Re: Mach 3 and 4th Axis

« on: July 01, 2010, 09:10:00 PM »

Just thought I would ask, I have seen it run that way and it looked simple enough. It ran just like you were working with xyz.

There are three things to do with a XYZ toolpath to effectively "Wrap" it around a rotary axis.

First is to change the relevant axis designations,

One way is as you have described, swap axis signal output.  As I said above there are other considerations when doing this.  They can be taken care of also, if you want to do a bit more fiddling.

Another way is you can use a text editor to swap axis names.  Also as described above.

There will be many other ways I can not think of right now.


Second thing is the output must be scaled to be correct on your given circumference.

This also can be done a myriad of ways.  

From scaling the original artwork before toolpath generation. to using Mach's scale axis feature, to going through the code with a calculator and scaling each position. (Yuck)

Adjust the axis steps per unit setting etc. etc. etc.  Choose your poison.  


Thirdly the direction of output must be taken into account.

Many will simply set the rotary axis to run in the "other than conventional" direction.  Nothing wrong with that, you are the operator and can run it any way you wish.

I prefer to stay with convention, but that is just me.  

As I said above, I find a tool like CNCWrapper to be a great little utility.  A couple of clicks and all is taken care of.

Greg