Messages

431

General Mach Discussion / Mach 3 upgrade path - UC100 + WIN10

« on: January 10, 2022, 12:00:10 PM »

I'm in the process of planning an upgrade of my CNC systems, prompted by fitting a VFD & 3 phase motor to my Myford which involves moving it and therefore having to disconnect all the CNC cables.  At the moment I have a venerable Dell Win XP desktop tucked under another bench with parallel port drive going through a 2-way switch to the lathe drivers or mill.  I've had the computer for more than 10 years, and I think it probably deserves a quiet retirement before its hard disk crashes! 

To simplify the cabling and as a first step to replacing the computer I'm planning to use a UC100 motion controller on the lathe, leaving the mill using the parallel port.  So 2 M3 profiles, one (lathe) with the UC100 plugin, the other (mill) using the parallel port, staying with Mach3.

So my first question please: can one operate a Mach3 installation in this way?  (Clearly I won't expect both profiles to run concurrently.)

The next step would be to move to a new PC, one of those little mini-PCs with an SSD; and also move to Win10.  That would also involve a second UC100  for the mill and some hardware switchery on the USB connection (as I gather that the UC100 plugin can't cope with two UC100s being connected at the same time).  What's the current position on using Mach3 with WIN10 please?

All suggestions and experiences gratefully received!

John.

432

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: G31.0 Probing with UC100 Issues

« on: January 08, 2022, 04:32:01 PM »

Thanks Craig. 

- John.

433

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: G31.0 Probing with UC100 Issues

« on: January 08, 2022, 12:10:06 PM »

So I'm thinking of moving to use a UC100 rather than parallel port, initially with Mach3.  Just to check, if one uses G1 or jogs close to a surface to probe, and (assuming that one is in G91 relative mode) use a command like "G31 X3 F5" then if one is closer than 3mm to the surface the machine will stop on contact and signal the position to Mach3 (or Mach4) - is that correct please?

434

General Mach Discussion / Re: Spindle drive

« on: January 03, 2022, 04:37:02 PM »

Look for KB Electronics.

435

General Mach Discussion / Re: HELP with Excel to Mach3

« on: January 02, 2022, 03:04:05 AM »

Understand about the limitations, and very happy to help.  I've had lots of help learning CNC from people here and it's good to pay back the community.  If you wanted to make a small donation to charity, especially Medecin Sans Frontieres, that would be very good.

Cheers, and happy 2022, John.

436

General Mach Discussion / Re: HELP with Excel to Mach3

« on: December 12, 2021, 04:01:41 AM »

Why do we bother to try to help people when they can't even say thanks?

437

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Excel to Mach4

« on: December 03, 2021, 09:48:34 AM »

Hi Ryan, I'm not sure how you got on with this but you might be interested in this post I made yesterday.
https://www.machsupport.com/forum/index.php?topic=45560.msg289783#msg289783

438

General Mach Discussion / Re: HELP with Excel to Mach3

« on: December 02, 2021, 11:15:50 AM »

Just a note to the powers that run this site - it doesn't allow xlsx file extensions!!  Since Excel started using these in 2003 I think the site needs to catch up!! 

439

General Mach Discussion / Re: HELP with Excel to Mach3

« on: December 02, 2021, 11:13:16 AM »

Here you go.  One row from a simple spreadsheet that does the conversion - see attached file. 
WIDTH   HEIGHT   g-code
12.25   54          G01 X12.25 Y54

The secret sauce is this Excel formula:
="G01 X"&A3&" Y"&B3
Where A3 and B3 contain the width and height values starting at row 3 for the first set of values.  So you just put your list of dimensions in columns A and B, put the formula in cell C3, and copy it down for as many rows as you need.

To get the table of dimensions into Excel get it exported as a csv file and open it in Excel - you probably know that.  Then paste the values into the above spreadsheet to do the g-code conversion.  To output a file to drive Mach3, copy the column with the g-code in it and paste into a new blank .txt document and save (or if on the same computer just open the "edit g-code" Mach3 window and paste it in).

I've used this method a lot to generate g-code for lots of odd shapes that need to be generated from mathematical formulae and it works just fine.

440

General Mach Discussion / Re: Mach Turn Problem I have.

« on: November 08, 2021, 12:08:45 PM »

Post the code please!