Messages

5391

General Mach Discussion / Re: What motor size and driver should I use

« on: November 19, 2009, 07:28:07 AM »

John,
If you can give an indication of the size of your machine / model then someone will be able relate to theirs and make a better suggestion. You can also go to DanaherMotion site and download a sizing program, and after defining all the parameters, it will give you torque requirements etc for motors.
RICH

5392

General Mach Discussion / Re: Motion Controller to Mach3 Problems

« on: November 19, 2009, 07:16:13 AM »

Take a look at the current limiting.
"disable the current limiting function ( if automaticaly turns off during an idle time you may have problems)"
RICH

5393

General Mach Discussion / Re: Shuttle plugin won't go away

« on: November 18, 2009, 09:55:11 PM »

What I do is just create a subdirectory below where it is located  and move the dll there. Now it is removed but not lost should i ever want to put it back.
RICH

5394

General Mach Discussion / Re: Strange Results

« on: November 18, 2009, 09:44:45 PM »

Nicolas,
I don't have a "specific" answer for why your machine all of sudden plunges down. It may happen for a number of reasons. I am not going to tell you to slow down / speed up/ retune ......... Instead just realize the following:

1.Not all material  ( wood  ) is the same so you need to adjust feeds and velocity based on what you are doing
and working with. No difference than if you were doing it by hand.

2. You can be missing a step. Normaly you would imediately hear it , but , because of the load router noise , you probably wouldn't hear the missed step.

3. My experience on missing steps is , two things happen, only a very small change in the axis location or it's  total loss of position and away she goes with nothing to control it except the estop.
During cutting air you can usualy just change velocity or acel leaving some headroom for cutting and thus not have a problem.  That may not be the case when cutting, as now you have introduced another parameter that can change the axis motion requirements as compared to air cutting / rapid move.
Nothing beats just cutting some scrap of different materials at different depths/ speeds / feeds  to get a good feel   of what to do in a program, AS IT RELATES TO YOUR MACHINE.

4.A router throws out all kinds of rf / noise / intreference / whatever you want to call it.......
You can be using it for a long time and then all of a sudden the noise will get ya !  Proper grounding, shielding , etc  will go along way to minimizing the chance that it can happen.

5.Now you also have the machine, suppose you jog the Z up and down or whatever 1000 times and all is well.
Now you cut something and at some time crap gets in your ways, or screw, etc ....and all of a sudden missed steps
because of mchanical influence.

6. I don't think it's the software, but one or a combination of some of the above.
    
FWIW,
RICH

5395

General Mach Discussion / Re: I thought this software was bug free by now

« on: November 18, 2009, 09:02:38 AM »

When you zoom in or out does it show the paths? Post one of the files that you are loading.
Rather time limited for the next few days so need to get out of here and attend to buisness. Somebody will chime in
and help you out.
RICH

5396

General Mach Discussion / Re: I thought this software was bug free by now

« on: November 18, 2009, 08:26:02 AM »

Dear Waiting Patiently,
I don't know of any software program that doesn't have bugs. LC is Beta and in the manual there is a list of known
bug / problems. Never saw a manual that had that in it! Don't know what your trying to do with LC and some modules only work with the Pro Version and that requires a license.
Haven,t tried LC in varsion .032 yet.
RICH

5397

Share Your GCode / Re: G code needed

« on: November 18, 2009, 08:16:32 AM »

HMM....
You may want to have a look at the ARC MOTION TUTORIAL  in Members Docs as that will show you how to program arcs. For the letter S you can do it with with just 2 or 4 lines of code. There are numerous examples of coding that you can look at and then just modify. See Fun programs for arc Motion in that tutorial. The problem with many programs is that they generate a lot of small lines to represent an arc. Although done for a lathe the info can be used for the mill just remember that your are in a different "plane"  G17 instead of "G18".

You can also just use LazyCam. There is a section in that manual on text.
RICH

5398

Show"N"Tell ( Your Machines) / Re: 4th Axis for CNC Router

« on: November 16, 2009, 10:54:51 PM »

Hmm.....
You never know until you try one. My Sherline rotary table has 5 minutes of backlash.
So at 1" from the center the backlash is equal  to 1/2 the thickness of a hair on your head.


Now it all depends a little on what your trying to do. Linear to angular conversion :
1 minute = .0003" per inch   or .0009" in 3"
1 arc sec= .000005" per inch

So 10 arc sec= .00005" backlash at 1" distance Or if you had a piece out at 3" that's .00015" at 3" distance.
I don't think your machine can machine to that.
So there is backlash and there is position. Now do you think for $99 you are going to get backlash equal to that?
Then you can also ask what is the positioning accuracy you are after?

Being practical about it all, the table may be perfectly fine for what you want to do.

Now i do have a positioning rotary table, that position wise, it's repeatable to 3 arc seconds. And if you bought it new it would be around $5000. That's not too much better than 10 arc seconds. Then of course, how would the average joe  measureing it to find out!
 
Just some things for you to think about,
RICH

5399

General Mach Discussion / Re: Problems threading on the lathe

« on: November 16, 2009, 08:36:42 PM »

Hi All,
Rev 0 - Threading On the Lathe was posted in Members Docs.
Good until the next version of Mach, 
RICH

5400

LazyCam (Beta) / Re: LAZYCAM MANUAL

« on: November 16, 2009, 07:14:36 PM »

Andy,
Appreciate that you are using it and hopefully it will make CNC more fun for you.
RICH