Topics

1

Newfangled Solutions Mach3 Wizards / MAch3 Add-on 'WRITE'

« on: June 20, 2016, 09:56:26 PM »

Does anyone know how to 1) center the text's words length-wise in WRITE (since only the letter's height is given)
2) tool assignment is 0,1,2,3...etc. How does one assign a tools diameter to these numbers?-Keith

2

G-Code, CAD, and CAM discussions / Pecking

« on: January 13, 2015, 05:56:06 PM »

I'm having a bit of a problem peck milling. I've had recent success with some relatively larger hole. This time around, I'm drilling down .375" into a .0555 diameter piece of polycarbonate with a .031" drill (of high quality). I'm using the longer retract method. The hole comes through okay (the fixturing is a bear) but the inside walls seem to have a spiral cut into them looking a lot like the spiral of the drill bit (but probably just an artifact of whatever is not right).
Any suggestions are appreciated. I read some where this might be an anomaly of not enough dwell at the end of a peck and then rapid-ing above the last height.-Keith

3

G-Code, CAD, and CAM discussions / Partial Circular Pocket

« on: October 23, 2014, 08:38:21 AM »

Need some help writing some g-code. Want to do an abbreviated circular pocket. This is to say, the center of the pocket is a circular cut leaving material within the center. Cutting outwards from this area is a spiral cut that forms the pocket.
My center is X.7376", Y is -.9757". The Z I may have only one depth because it is quite small.
Center circular material's diameter that is left after cut, is .0394
Final circular pocket diameter around the center material is .4743"
I could do it with concentric cuts but prefer the finish of the spiral cut.
I would like the two types of cuts to be one fluid motion (coming off the center circle and continuing into the spiral).
Something like the attached drawing.-Keith

4

Newfangled Solutions Mach3 Wizards / Arc Wizard

« on: September 29, 2014, 05:47:51 PM »

Can anyone explain the arc wizard by Brian Barker to me. I've attached a .dxf file (and yes, I know I could use that to do the cut but since lazy cam freezes my machine...) and the arcs I want to make are in 'red'. If you could use these arcs and apply it to the qualities needed to be filled in on the arc wizard window, I think I can then make sense of it.

The cut is centered between two other arcs (in black) and I'll be using a .0625" mill end which will cut past those black arcs outside the red ones.
Thanks, Keith

5

General Mach Discussion / Is it Backlash...still?

« on: September 20, 2014, 04:20:01 PM »

Hey there, not sure if this is a mach question, so may not belong here, but in an effort to knock out some terribly wacky backlash (X-axis) I replaced gibs, lead screws, even one motor. Figured I'd do it on the Y and Z while I was at it, on my Sherline 2000.
It looked like I got out as much backlash as is possible on that machine but if you'll view the attached photo, you'll see where the arrow annotation is, there's this scalloped look to the cut. I tested with Kiran's wizard for cutting a circle.
Anyway, I'm wondering what's causing this. Is it motor tuning? Too tight a gib? Smoothstepper setting?
Any ideas would be appreciated. -Keith

6

General Mach Discussion / Mach3 Sherline Rotary Magic Number

« on: June 21, 2014, 04:04:53 PM »

I haven't used my Sherline Rotary Table in some time and since did a lot of re-installed. And I know this topic has been covered before but from what I read and apply, I can't get my rotary table to move in degrees properly.
I understand that the worm gear is a 72 turns to get 360 degrees of movement on the table top.
I believe it's doing half stepping, so 400 steps per stepper revolution (.9 degree per half step).
I don't think the velocity and acceleration numbers effect the ability to input degrees and get the table to move to the inputted degree.
I'm just forgetting the magic number in 'steps per' in motor tuning that I had and that worked before.
I'm coming up with the number 28800 but that doesn't work correctly.
So if anybody has that number that allows to put in a G01 A5 and the table goes to 5 degrees from zero, I'd appreciate it very much.
Thanks, Keith

7

SmoothStepper USB / USB S.S. Driver Accumulation Errors?

« on: June 18, 2014, 10:39:40 AM »

I've, throughout my possession of the USB S.S. have had so many problems with the driver. For some time I had it running well but recently that has changed. I've tried all the drivers past and present. Early on, noise was a problem but I 'choked' that well.
Now, I can run my machine for a bit but at some point I get a driver error. So what I do is cut for a while and then close down Mach and restart and usually I make it in time before an error and continue on this way which as you can imagine is a pain.
So I'm wondering, since all I have to do is keep re-starting Mach, is this error something that happens because of an accumulation of data somewhere?
I think often the message is something like: driver error , expected *this many* bytes but received *this many bytes*.
-Keith

8

General Mach Discussion / Motor Tuning

« on: August 21, 2012, 04:42:45 PM »

I haven't used my rotary table for a while. I use the A-axis for it. I recently re-installed Mach on a new computer and have a Smoothstepper I'm using as well. Got a lot of the bugs out of things that were inherently Smoothstepper related. Have been using the mill for a while and all has been well. So once I decided to get my rotary table up and running (after tearing it apart), I went to config/motor tuning and it seemed to respond by closing the config drop down but ...no motor tuning screen!?!

I mention having the Smoothstepper because any new problems seemed related to it but this one seems a little left field. All the other config windows come up, only the motor tuning window is a 'no show'.
Any ideas?-Keith

9

LazyCam (Beta) / LC lockup

« on: May 19, 2012, 03:59:40 PM »

Lazy Cam freezes my computer (running XP) any time I try and initialize. I get the screen logo and then my cursor locks up and can't get out without turning off my machine. Damn I wish "import .dxf" wasn't taken off of Mach. Any other way to get a .dxf into Mach3?-Keith

10

General Mach Discussion / From Mach to Mach

« on: May 08, 2012, 10:42:45 AM »

I'm a many year user of Mach and became so comfortable with an older version (Mach2 lockdown) I never felt the need to update being a stern believer of "don't fix what ain't making life miserable".
So having recently bought the SmoothStepper, I moved on to Mach3 lockdown. Two questions for my new environment:

1) What happened to "import .DXF"? I used that so much, that when it disappeared, I thought I had been cryogenically frozen and woke to find we no longer wore shoes. Is it in LazyCam now?

2) What happened to "Multi-Pass" where one could incrementally lower the 'Z' at each pass of a program? Again with the "no shoes!".

-Keith