Messages

81

Mach Screens / Re: Screen designer

« on: October 18, 2006, 11:29:17 AM »

I have an unused vintage VGA 14" diagonal color flat touch screen, and it only supports 640x480. Is there a relatively painless way to shrink a standard mill screen set to fit it?  The image won't be smaller, just lower resolution.

I tried Screen4 and it is not quite painless (Also tried ScrEdit).  It also makes the 640x480 screen a full 640x480 and did not compensate for the fact that there is a window border and bottom toolbar. As a result, when I tried my first effort on the actual screen, about 20% of the screen was off the bottom.  I realized that I need to start over with a new layout strategy. I noticed that some of the items do not seem to be re-sizable, and I started throwing a lot of the obscure functions away to make the essentials fit.

Before I do that, I need to ask the question.

Would it be reasonably possible to sweep through the *********.set file with a VB (or similar) program to resize and reposition all of the screen elements to fit semi automatically? That would weed out the worst of the work effort.

I realize that writing auto sizing screens is a bit of a hassle, but it would have been very nice in this case. I used to write that kind of code in VB for making process monitoring windows that the user could zoom in or push out of the way whenever desired. All of the sizing calculations were based on the resized window size.

Thanks.
Bill

82

LazyCam (Beta) / Re: LazyCam 2.64 problems

« on: October 05, 2006, 01:51:31 PM »

Ran a job last night that called for doing a peck point drill. LazyCAM converted it to a G81 function.
The set-up was to drill a 0.125 diameter hole to -0.560 and drilled 0.150 at a time.

Two things were evident.
1) The LazyCAM generated a G81 command (non peck)
2) It drilled only one peck to -0.15.

I had to go in and modify the line manually to be a G83 and changed to Z-0.5600  and added Q0.150 to fix it.

The original LazyCAM line was
 G81 X0.6325 Y0.8255 Z-0.1500 R0.2500 F20.00
the line should have been (or equivalent)
 G83 X0.6325 Y0.8255 Z-0.5600 R0.2500 F20.00 Q0.150


Bill

83

LazyCam (Beta) / Re: Cutting order

« on: October 05, 2006, 11:22:09 AM »

In order to change cuting order, you need to put each different order item on a different layer. Then you can select the cut order directly and positively. If two items are on the same layer, they will cut in whatever order the program wants to. You can sometimes affect the order by altering the starting point.

84

LazyCam (Beta) / Re: LazyCam 2.64 problems

« on: September 12, 2006, 02:40:56 PM »

One thing I noticed is that the informational popups do not maintain ON-TOP status and can get lost under a screen waiting for an answer causing the system to appear to be hung. This is also true in Mach 3.

The other thing that might be nice is to allow a different color to each imported layer, rather than to the arc and circle attribute. Perhaps this can be a switchable option. I am using different layers to achieve depth of cut and order of cut control

I also noticed that lazycam does not try to attach line segments together if they cross at the ends or come very close together. I am finding that I have to be extra very careful with the drawing connect points to make sure they are the same point, close doesn't seem to cut it. I believe the old DXF converter had a setting for finding close endpoints and tying them together.

Also the program wants to assign climb-mill mode to all chains, which effectively reverses the direction of the cut. Will you be eventually having a preferences setting for this? The "Rapids Options" section seems to be headed that way, although it seems to do nothing at the moment.

85

General Mach Discussion / Re: Installation problems - No Driver Sensed Installed. Run Driver Test

« on: September 12, 2006, 02:14:49 PM »

Learned my lesson.. never install the driver a second time.

Yes I had clicked on install the driver option, but forgot to reboot because I though it would not overlay or mess up the one already installed. I had it running yesterday. I am not sure what I would have done without the option to revert to an earlier XP setup.

Bill

86

General Mach Discussion / Re: Installation problems - No Driver Sensed Installed. Run Driver Test

« on: September 11, 2006, 12:09:03 AM »

Resolved the problem using XP system restore command to undo the latest update. It then allowed me to install the latest software and driver.
See: Start/programs/accessories/system tools/system restore.  Hopefully you have a recent restore point that does not undo too much. Restore does not remove data files.

Thanks.
Bill

87

General Mach Discussion / Re: Installation problems - No Driver Sensed Installed. Run Driver Test

« on: September 10, 2006, 10:00:50 PM »

I have the same problem. I un-installed and reinstalled program several times. I cannot remove the driver manually because it does not seem to be installed, at least not where the manual says it can be found. I hunted down and removed the Mach3.sys file from the system directory and tried to manually install  a new one. The installer reports a file not found error after opening the inf file.
I am dead in the water until I get this resolved!

There must be a hook in the registry that can clear this up.

any ideas anyone?

Thanks.
Bill

88

LazyCam (Beta) / Re: LazyCam 2.64 problems

« on: September 05, 2006, 04:19:43 PM »

Thanks for the motion information. Missed it twice in the video.

One other question on cutting If I want to cut out a box with a rectangular opening in it. The cutout is obviously an inside cut and around the outside is the outside cut. if I cut around the inside hole using a CW rotating bit from the top which way should it trace the hole CW or CCW for the better finish?

Thanks.

 

89

LazyCam (Beta) / LazyCam 2.64 problems

« on: September 05, 2006, 01:18:31 PM »

I can't get lazycam version 2.64 to move a chain from one layer to another.
I want to be able to have at least 5 layers in a drawing to create
 
1) the part outline and cutouts uncompensated.
2) Outside for the part jig
3) Inside for the part jig
4) Outside for the part
5) Inside1 for the part
 
Can this be done after pulling in the part using auto layer?
 
I guess this comes from trying to bring in the file using my own layers and discovering that the Lazycam does not/will not?? optimize routing and wants to route as drawn.
 
I also noticed that 2.64 does not zoom, rotate, or pan on my win2k system.

Thanks