Messages

31

General Mach Discussion / Re: Setup help much abliged!

« on: September 24, 2008, 07:50:53 PM »

Upon further inspection it looks like all three axis are almost there. . . 995 tho on x and 996 tho on y and z. Still not sure what the deal is.

32

General Mach Discussion / Re: Setup help much abliged!

« on: September 24, 2008, 07:29:04 PM »

I'm also curious why my velocity seems to be capped as a function of steps/unit I used to not be able to go above 150. Now I can't go above 147.13431

33

General Mach Discussion / Re: Setup help much abliged!

« on: September 24, 2008, 07:27:28 PM »

And now I'm at 988 thou. . . Again, tried it twice.

34

General Mach Discussion / Re: Setup help much abliged!

« on: September 24, 2008, 07:20:36 PM »

Yeah. . .  your good.

Looked at the site I bought them from. 5mm pitch

Leaves me at 10160 steps/in I believe. About to go check it.

35

General Mach Discussion / Re: Setup help much abliged!

« on: September 24, 2008, 06:55:52 PM »

Ok,

did this:
g1 x-1
g1 x0
Zeroed dial indicator
g1 x1

indicator reads 973 thou

I did the same thing twice and got 973 both times.

36

General Mach Discussion / Re: Setup help much abliged!

« on: September 24, 2008, 06:23:36 PM »

I will play with the computer more to see how it behaves. I believe that it only hangs up when I've been using mach3. As I believe I mentioned, its a fresh install with nothing on it except mach3. SP3. . . I'll trouble shoot it some more and verify if this is the case or not.

Changing the steps/unit to 10,000 got me to .960 in for g1 x1. Could the other 40 thou be backlash? I've got the ball screws from the deluxe CNC fusion and was under the impression that I shouldn't see any backlash.

Reversed the Y without trouble. Thanks,

Adam

37

General Mach Discussion / Setup help much abliged!

« on: September 24, 2008, 01:56:09 AM »

Hey,

I just got my new build up and am having a couple problems. The first being that the computer I'm running Mach3 from (and only mach3. . . it's a fresh windows install) will tend to sit in the "Windows is shutting down" screen indefinitely. I have a feeling its trying to do something with the parallel port pins but I really have know idea. I'm using a PCI card to get the parallel cable and I'm confident that the drivers are up to date. Any ideas on what is going on?

And the second problem that I am having is everything I do is scaled down. ie 1 inch is .2 inches. Mach3 is set to inches. The ball screws I am running are 5 rot/in and the steppers are 200 steps/rev. Under motor tuning, I've got mach3 set to 1000 steps/unit. I don't know what the difference is between full stepping/halfstepping/microstepping. Can someone please explain? I am running G203v drivers.

While I'm here, I'd also like to ask. . . what's the right way to change directions on an axis. For instance, my Y goes in when I want it to go out.

Thanks and I apologize for the basic questions,
Adam

38

General Mach Discussion / Re: Mach 3 freezeing/simulation mode

« on: August 22, 2008, 11:35:33 AM »

So it turns out mach3 is not to blame; It freezes up with out without mach3 running and this is a recent thing.

I opened up the computer case and blew out the 4 year old dust build up and man it went flying... and kept on flying... and still more went flying. It seems to be running smoothly now without hiccups but I am keeping my fingers crossed.

On a separate note, I can't seem to get mach3 to jog. I listened to the setup videos. I have been able to jog no problem on my laptop in simulation mode, but not with the desktop running "real" I haven't had any luck. Any guesses?

Thanks again and my apologies for the post

39

General Mach Discussion / Mach 3 freezeing/simulation mode

« on: August 21, 2008, 11:33:59 AM »

Hi,

I recently bought and downloaded mach3. I am running it on my desktop that currently does not have a parallel printer port. I plan on buying a PCI card with one soon but I still wanted to test the product out, without the parallel port.

On multiple occasions the machine would freeze. I tried installing the "special driver" and that did not help. When I first installed the software I did not check the "simulation mode".

Am I having problems because I have no parallel port and am not running in simulation mode or is there something else going on here? In addition to the freezing, I was having trouble jogging the axis. I went through the tutorials and believe I did everything right and am also attributing this to not actually running a cnc machine. Is there a way to easily go in and out of "simulation mode"?

Thank you for your time,
Adam