Messages

2261

General Mach Discussion / Re: Thinking of a NEW function "Tool wear tracking "

« on: December 19, 2012, 07:03:56 AM »

But would it be practical for say Router or Mill

At the hobby level don't think so. At the production level yes. ie; Some high speed spindles must be rebuilt after so manny hours of run time. One shop exceeded that and had a big expense to replace and the company voided the warranty / reduced rebuild charge. I had a tour of one place and on night shift there was only one control room operator. Since the line was automated the tool was automaticaly checked for wear after so manny runs and time, changed it out, and continued running. The operator only interceeded if shutdown or broken condition was reported. At another place they monitor run time and just change out the carbide tooling as they have wear statistics.

So my experience is rather limited.  Others may give you a better perspective.

RICH
 

2262

General Mach Discussion / Re: Lost

« on: December 18, 2012, 06:21:35 PM »

Try posting the xml again but this time change the xml name to someting unique.
IE;    LOST_RGCUSTOM.XML

It is so much easier to review the xml and send you a modified one back with changed settings which
take care of any problems found.

RICH

2263

General Mach Discussion / Re: Lost

« on: December 18, 2012, 05:04:02 PM »

Link about using soft limits without switches:

http://www.machsupport.com/forum/index.php/topic,11409.msg72346.html#msg72346

You can turn soft limits off. Just put the piece in the middle of the table, jog to center the piece, ref all, zero each axis, the dro's will go to zero,there is no offset created.

I don't have switches and don't even bother using soft limits without switches since if you home and then accidently bump / nove the the  axis with the machine off your not where you think you are relative to machine coordinates when you start up again.

RICH

2264

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

« on: December 18, 2012, 06:22:22 AM »

metalfreak,
Been a long time since I registered so not sure what you mean by the captcha thing. Constructive comments
are always welcomed.
RICH

2265

General Mach Discussion / Re: Thinking of a new wrapper function for MAch3.

« on: December 18, 2012, 06:12:02 AM »

Terry,
I was just wondering how far the wizard could be developed. I already use 3d CAD and CAM.
Thanks for your efforts,
RICH

2266

General Mach Discussion / Re: Thinking of a new wrapper function for MAch3.

« on: December 17, 2012, 04:46:56 PM »

Terry,
Keep sewing and get good at it ....have a bunch of pants that need to be hemmed!

Glad Tweakie had time to play with the wizard as my time to play has been and continues to be a big zero for some time now.

What can you do to the wizard allowing wrapping on a say a tapered piece, or convex / concave?

RICH

2267

General Mach Discussion / Re: Thinking of a new wrapper function for MAch3.

« on: December 16, 2012, 07:26:01 AM »

Terry,
Both.
The wizard would be a single machining step while the macro would allow use in a gcode file with other machining steps.

True ?,
RICH

2268

General Mach Discussion / Re: Thinking of a new wrapper function for MAch3.

« on: December 15, 2012, 07:20:30 AM »

Terry,
No, not far fetched from lack of sleep at all.

Most are inplementing 4th axis to the mill. So a takeoff would be what your suggesting.
I have thought differently and that is to add milling to the lathe.

I was fooling around a few years ago on the lathe. Provided a stepper driven spindle, used a high speed rotary tool mounted on the carriage, setup the spindle as linear A and also angular, then with the Z at feed rate and A turning you could machine some nice deisgns over a shaft. I guess i was trying to slave the two axes also. The problem was a stepper for the spindle was not good since you would get changing feedrate which was not linear and limited. (As spindle speed / feedrate  was increased the stepper torque was on the down side and the torque required to turn the spindle was increasing). One of these days I'll splurge and get a servo and drive to fool arond with.

The nest step was to add the equivilant of the mill Z axis to the carriage. Still in the works .....just another project to be done.

That thinking was, once a piece was cnc turned, one could do additional machinng / milling without removing it from the lathe. Or do some things that normaly would required the 3D process and avoid setup or transfer of the piece to the mill.

I will remark that the above was for small stuff.

Play with the idea and see where it takes ya,

RICH

2269

General Mach Discussion / Re: Mach3 License Not Responding

« on: December 14, 2012, 06:25:43 PM »

Oddly, very similar happened ( including that or similar message ) to me just recently when trying out a posted xml. In that case it was looking for a screen set that did not exist.

You may want to say what Windows version your using.
Sorry I can't be of more help.
RICH

2270

General Mach Discussion / Re: What external motion controller do I choose?

« on: December 14, 2012, 06:14:08 PM »

I thought that W7 allowed one to boot-up on a different drive so one could have XP installed also on a different drive or partition. So if you wanted, you could have two worlds to play with. Different formating of the partitioned drives, not sure about that.

but why would I want to go to an old OS if I don't have to?

Because it works and is reliable with current Mach. One can select the time frame to change.

By the time a new user figures out just what they really need to do what they want with their machine there will probably be another Windows version out.....another external motion controller ..........another whatever.......

Heck, anybody figured out how to use a DOS batch file to get Mach working, and better yet how to keep my tape drive from
slowing down.

Maybe it's time to upgrade.......
RICH