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General Mach Discussion / Re: Questions about "Soft Max", "Soft Min", "Slow Zone" and "Home Off"..
« on: January 05, 2014, 08:50:50 AM »
Adam,
Link to a tutorial on setting up a basic 3 axis mill. See pages 11-14 about switches and homing to suppliment replies already made.
http://www.machsupport.com/forum/index.php/topic,26252.0.html
Here is a link to Mach videos which you should find of value.
http://www.machsupport.com/videos/
A few general comments:
1. Switches are used to provide for a repeatable location to a point within the possible movement of the axes.
One could have no swithes or some combination of switches.They can be setup and used in a number of ways.
In general they automate setting up the machine ie; for a machining job, positive restriction of axis movement, defining to Mach some point.
2. The controlling software ( MACH ) does not know anything about some point on the machine, how far an axis can move in a direction, etc.
The user must define point / points to the controller so that Mach can associate the machine point, tool point, program point for maching tasks.
Hmm...lots of points and notice they were only general descriptions!
3. One needs to be carefull in the thinking about switches. When setting them up the focus seems to be on the mill table / z spindle travel or
the carriage for the lathe. That thinking is one part of the overall consideration for setting some points.
4. You will find that the thought process is different when presented by different manufactures or say Smid ( an author on CNC, BTW,
his books are an excellant resource and has one on machine setup). They define terms in a very specific way for understanding and
generaly correlate the points to how gcode is appied. You may want to have a look at Fanuc's info.
5. A few comments on wording which is important.
A machine has extreme travel limits. A point within the limits must be defined to the controller ( Mach3) so that all other movements can be associated.
That point is machine zero and as such is known, fixed and defined. Home is just a point within the limits and it can be anywhere, but, home is usually
machine zero. So home is used interchangeably with machine zero many times. Referencing is used to describe the condition where one has moved to
some point and done something to tell the controller that the current position is machine zero or home. Homing can be done automatically, using the MDI,
or manually and used to describe the motion of returning to machine zero. Fixture offsets are defined locations away from the home position.
Fixture offsets are not to be confused with tool offsets. So an offset is just some distance from a point and needs to be always clarified.
6. I attached some info from a Fanuc Manual that you may want find informative. Look at thee figures and associated text that appies to them.
Give you a flavor about offsets .......
RICH
Link to a tutorial on setting up a basic 3 axis mill. See pages 11-14 about switches and homing to suppliment replies already made.
http://www.machsupport.com/forum/index.php/topic,26252.0.html
Here is a link to Mach videos which you should find of value.
http://www.machsupport.com/videos/
A few general comments:
1. Switches are used to provide for a repeatable location to a point within the possible movement of the axes.
One could have no swithes or some combination of switches.They can be setup and used in a number of ways.
In general they automate setting up the machine ie; for a machining job, positive restriction of axis movement, defining to Mach some point.
2. The controlling software ( MACH ) does not know anything about some point on the machine, how far an axis can move in a direction, etc.
The user must define point / points to the controller so that Mach can associate the machine point, tool point, program point for maching tasks.
Hmm...lots of points and notice they were only general descriptions!
3. One needs to be carefull in the thinking about switches. When setting them up the focus seems to be on the mill table / z spindle travel or
the carriage for the lathe. That thinking is one part of the overall consideration for setting some points.
4. You will find that the thought process is different when presented by different manufactures or say Smid ( an author on CNC, BTW,
his books are an excellant resource and has one on machine setup). They define terms in a very specific way for understanding and
generaly correlate the points to how gcode is appied. You may want to have a look at Fanuc's info.
5. A few comments on wording which is important.
A machine has extreme travel limits. A point within the limits must be defined to the controller ( Mach3) so that all other movements can be associated.
That point is machine zero and as such is known, fixed and defined. Home is just a point within the limits and it can be anywhere, but, home is usually
machine zero. So home is used interchangeably with machine zero many times. Referencing is used to describe the condition where one has moved to
some point and done something to tell the controller that the current position is machine zero or home. Homing can be done automatically, using the MDI,
or manually and used to describe the motion of returning to machine zero. Fixture offsets are defined locations away from the home position.
Fixture offsets are not to be confused with tool offsets. So an offset is just some distance from a point and needs to be always clarified.
6. I attached some info from a Fanuc Manual that you may want find informative. Look at thee figures and associated text that appies to them.
Give you a flavor about offsets .......
RICH