Messages

11

General Mach Discussion / Re: Starting from scratch.

« on: October 13, 2010, 06:36:40 AM »

Just a side note.  CamBam now has a lathe module that is in BETA testing and is part of the current download.
George

12

General Mach Discussion / Re: Starting from scratch.

« on: October 12, 2010, 08:00:58 PM »

Congratulations on your new equipment that is on the way.  Bet you are going to have a ball learning all the new stuff necessary to start cutting parts.

I have been using CamBam for the past couple of years.  It is a very nice CAD and CAM program.  You can download a full working copy from their site.  It can be run, to do a full job, I believe 40 times.  It will then revert back to only 500 lines of GCode until you purchase a registration code.  They have a great support group as well.  Very reasonably priced and you can communicate directly with the writer/developer directly on the forum.  His name is Andy and he goes by 10Bulls on the forum.

Here is the link to the forum, you can get to the download page from there as well.

http://www.cambam.co.uk/forum/index.php

Try it I think you may like it,
George

13

General Mach Discussion / Re: best monitor size

« on: October 08, 2010, 07:44:01 PM »

I guess I would fit into the older age group!  I have used several sizes from 12 inch on up. 

I ended up with a 21 inch flat screen.  I can see it from across the room!  and it takes up a lot less bench space than the 17 inch CRT type that I had, and weighs a whole bunch less.  Found it on sale at a BestBuys store for $99

George

14

General Mach Discussion / Re: rewiring to minimize EMF and heat

« on: October 07, 2010, 03:56:59 AM »

I have a small 3 axis home built mill using a Hobby CNC control board.  Initially I had a lot of false triggering of the homing switch's and it was difficult to home without a stop along the way on one or more of the Axis.
I ran shielded wires for all the limit switches and that really helped a lot.  But from time to time I would still get a false stop when homing.  The last thing that I did solved all my noise problems.  I put a .01 mfd and a 2 mfd capacitor on the circuit board where the wires from the home switches connected to the board.  The capacitors are between the active pin, the one with the pull up resistor, and the circuit board ground connection.  Like magic all the false triggering has been gone since that last addition. 

The capacitors are very small and can be obtained from your local Radio Shack or on line.
George

15

Mach Screens / Re: all the stuff needed on the screen??

« on: September 29, 2010, 07:59:08 PM »

Hi Arbo:
If it would help you can download my button set they are very similar and do not have any of the gray outlines.  I built all new ones when I built the screen set.
George

16

Mach Screens / Re: all the stuff needed on the screen??

« on: September 28, 2010, 07:16:28 AM »

Hi Arbo:
I went through the same user curve as you are going through.  I built a SimpleMill set for my own use and made it available for others.
It may well be a starting point for you to look at.  I did both a three and four axis set.  It only has two screens and I built it to do just what I was doing, nothing more.

Incidentally, it was based on ger21 Aqua Screen Set.  I used that for some time as well.

You can see and download it at:  http://www.mrrace.com/SimpleMill/

George

17

General Mach Discussion / Re: PC built exclusively to run a CNC machine

« on: September 25, 2010, 08:18:54 AM »

If you go to the "Big Box Store" and tell them you want everything removed from the PC except for the Windows Operating System, their "Geeks" should be able to do exactly that before they deliver your new PC.  If they won't do that, then you can simply go into the "uninstall, Add Remove Programs" menu and remove everything yourself, expect for the stuff that has the name "Microsoft" in front of it.
That will give you a clean PC without all of the extra stuff that gets installed with many of the commercial programs.
George

18

Mach3 and G-Rex / Re: Mach 3 display screen size

« on: September 23, 2010, 08:24:17 AM »

Hi Vic:
I am not sure what you are asking, about running it off line as Mach3 does that just fine, without a machine attached to your computer.

Maybe you don't understand how to install the screen set, so here is how you do it.

First, download the screen set from my web site:  http://www.mrrace.com/SimpleMill/

Click on the download link to get a copy of simple mill.  Un ZIP the file and simply copy the SimpleMill folder to your Mach3 bitmap directory and copy SimpleMill 3A.set or SimpleMill 4A.set to your Mach3 directory.  Select View from the Mach3 menu and click on SimpleMill 3A.set or SimpleMill 4A.set to load either screen set.

You can now load and run your GCode without any mill attached.

Please let me know if this is what you needed,
Thanks,
George

19

Mach3 and G-Rex / Re: Mach 3 display screen size

« on: September 22, 2010, 09:40:13 AM »

Good Morning:
I have a screen set that I wrote for Mach3.  It can be either a 3 axis or 4 axis display.  One of the features is a full screen display of the cutting area.  This may be what you are looking for.
You can download the .set files and graphic files from: http://www.mrrace.com/SimpleMill/

Or, you can use the MachScreen program to make changes to your existing screen set.

George

20

General Mach Discussion / Re: Losing Steps?

« on: September 16, 2010, 07:41:08 PM »

I am not sure but wonder if using non shielded wires is causing your problem.  I had a lot of similar problems when I first built my setup.  Using shielded wire solved all of my problems.  Sounds like increasing the pulse width increases the error distance, which could indicate that something is picking up a stray pulse causing an error to occur.
George