Messages

131

General Mach Discussion / Re: Stop, Feedhold, E-Stop

« on: August 27, 2010, 12:13:32 PM »

My day job interfers with my hobby.  Did an alarm control swap and reprogram yesterday to a system with more user capability for a client.  Today I finish fixing an alarm for a client that ripped out a bunch of doors without a lot of discrimination.  The weekend I will be installing a video system in a busy office building because it would be a pain to do it during the week.  Got home tired every day this week.  I still need to swap my Gecko Control back onto the machine now that I got it back from Geckodrive, and I need to finish the enclosure I started.  I wleded up the aluminum pan for it the one afternoon I didn't get home tired this week.  I know.  I know.  Its just excuses. 

132

General Mach Discussion / Re: Stop, Feedhold, E-Stop

« on: August 26, 2010, 09:53:17 PM »

I prefer set next line over run from here.  Its easier to know what its supposed to do next.  I like to select a next line that is a G00 to a safe Z height.  

133

General Mach Discussion / Re: Stop, Feedhold, E-Stop

« on: August 26, 2010, 01:54:46 PM »

I figure it will be pretty easy to test.  Just set a block of aluminum on the mill and write a program to engrave a couple nested squares over and over  again.  Hit feedhold.  Wait for it to stop, then hit start. 

134

General Mach Discussion / Re: Stop, Feedhold, E-Stop

« on: August 26, 2010, 01:37:48 PM »

I'll run some tests with a scratch engraver at max speed to test and see what happens, but I'm pretty sure feed hold lost position also. 

135

General Mach Discussion / Re: twinned motors; 2 sharing 1 driver

« on: August 26, 2010, 01:26:55 PM »

Two motors off one driver?  Is this for concurrent operation like maybe for two z-axis to cut two pieces concurrently?  Why not just use a timing belt between the two?  Set it up with a clutch on the secondary axis so you can disengage and spin it to match.  If its for some other purpose then obviously my suggestion is a waste of electrons. 

136

General Mach Discussion / Stop, Feedhold, E-Stop

« on: August 26, 2010, 12:34:41 PM »

For maintaining stepper to control software accuracy and consistency of position what is the best way to stop a program in mid run?  I have always used e-stop.  When my machine was running slower it was fine, but now that I get much faster rapids and even cut faster some times its a pretty hard stop. 

It seems like when I use feedhold or just stop I lose position.  I suppose it could be related to the fact that I have Mach set to run with high priority and it may take a couple instructions before it picks up the keyboard scan code, but I am not sure.  Seems like that would be an issue with E-stop too then. 

137

General Mach Discussion / Re: not circle that is a polygon

« on: August 26, 2010, 12:27:17 PM »

I am curious how you know its pirated?  I have my perfectly legal copy installed on three machines.  Two of them I use for design work and just use Mach for dry running and reviewing the toolpaths.  One is for actually driving my machine.  Its my understanding that for personal use the license allows you to run Mach on multiple machines.  I have copies of my license files stored in three places so I won't lose them and I can re-install on the fly if I have to, and I have had to when a machine needed to be replaced.  

To the OP:  Sorry about the thread jack, but this is of immense curiosity to me. 

138

General Mach Discussion / Re: not circle that is a polygon

« on: August 26, 2010, 11:27:41 AM »

I'm not arguing whether or not his license is legit.  Just curious how it could effect working quality? 

139

General Mach Discussion / Re: High speed spindle recommendations

« on: August 19, 2010, 11:00:03 AM »

Just FYI....  I have over 100 hours on one of the Harbor Freight tools at continuous duty at maximum speed (15K).  The handpiece is starting to exhibit noticeable side play.  I would no longer trust it with high feedrate for the smaller tools, but its still fine for rough work with a 1/8" ( 3mm apx ) ball cutter.  I have not tried to adjust it yet.  That being said it still has less side play than the stock setting for  Foredom 44T.  I now have a Foredom 25 hand piece which Foredom reccomended for continuous duty production work.  They claim side play is about .00015" ( .004 mm apx ) and that it has much larger bearings to hold up to continuous duty and reduce heat buildup.  It is slightly larger diamter so I need to make a new set of mounting clamps for it before I can test it.  I know these are not as fast as you are looking for at 15K with the HF motor or upto 18K with some of the Foredom motors, but I figured since its what I have direct recent experience with I'ld keep you posted for background information.  

140

General Mach Discussion / Re: Raising my Z axis.

« on: August 18, 2010, 12:43:27 PM »

Hmmm... I use Cam Bam for most things and I can set the Z clearnace for each MOP.  For quicky jobs I use NFS Wizard and I can set it per MOP there too.  What I can't do easily is set a low Z clearance during the MOP and a high Z clearnace to move from area of the work piece to another before starting the next MOP. 

One example would be cutting a pocket inside of a pocket.  Why raise the cutter to a height above Zero only to drop it all the way down to the current work surface below zero on each position move.  Its waste of machine time. 

In order to do that I either need to manually edit my code for each MOP so the first Z position is truly safe or create a seperate MOP for moving from one MOP to the next.