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Messages - kf2qd

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91
General Mach Discussion / Re: Charging for CNC Time
« on: October 14, 2010, 04:20:55 PM »
Are you running programs you create? Or that the customer creates? Do you have to do work on the drawings? or do they come from your customer with everything cleaned up? How much does it cost for the operator (wages, benefits, disability, etc) How much does the floor space cost a month? What are your monthly costs for the machine?(payments, interest...) How much do any competitors charge? How much for cutters and electric? How much time is going to be spent loading and unloading the machine?

You will probably have to charge a bit less to start with, just to get them hooked, and figure out the best practices for getting the work done. After a bit of work you will get a better idea of what the real costs are. What is the going rate for shop time in your area?

Years ago I ran an old Tape Turn Regal. The shop charged twice the rate for the rest of the machines in the shop. After my first month they made money hand over fist because, once I figured out how to run it, I could get so much more work done that the manual machines. The hourly rate may sound a bit high, but if you are runnng it right you should be getting things done faster so the end product doesn't cost any more.


92
General Mach Discussion / Re: plasma anti dive
« on: October 13, 2010, 02:33:31 PM »
Some Plasma Torch Height Controls have the necesary stufff inside to do this function - sudden changed in carc voltage will be ignored, gradual changes will be compensated for. The other function is a Torch Height Control Disable function that is controlled by the CNC. This prevents the torch from dropping onto the plate when the machine slows down coming into a corner, or when cutting small circles where the machine can't run full speed.

Which function are you talking about?

93
General Mach Discussion / Re: Foam cutter with 4 independent of each other?
« on: September 24, 2010, 10:49:47 AM »
Here's an idea of what a foam cutter might look like. ( sorry about how it looks , it was a quickie...)

94
General Mach Discussion / Re: Foam cutter with 4 independent of each other?
« on: September 24, 2010, 10:05:52 AM »
Here's what I hear you descibing - you wnat to build a foam cutter with vertically mounted parallel X-Y stages at each end, and a hot foam cutting wire streched between them. A typical use is for cutting foam cores for model airplane wings.

Here's how I would set it up - One X-Y stage would be called X & Y in  Mach and the other would be A & B. A is parallel to X and B is parallel to Y.  A & B are both configured as LINEAR. And I am assuming the steps per inch are the same for all axis.

There are 2 ways of controlling the motion - if your parts have no tapers you could pprogram everything as X & Y moves and all motion is available, go to the Functin Cfg menu and select formulas and in the A line put X and in the B line put Y. The AB stage will copy the motion of the XY stage. If you want some other ratio (AB end 3/4 of the XY end  then you would put x*.75 in the A line and y*.75 for B)

The other method has more flexibility - but is restricted to G0 and G1 - No changes in formulas, A =A, B=B, but you would have to program only in line segments. each line would  look like this - G1 X___ Y___ A___ B___ F___ and would start and finish at the same time. As long as you used short line segments you would hardly notice them, and a quick touch with sandpaper would take care of that, BUT both ends of the motion could have completely different motin profiles. Airfoil 1 and the XY end, and Airfoil B on the AB end. You could even program a twist intothe profile, End XY is parallel to the X axis and AB is rotated 3 degress to the A axis.

Does this sound like what you are trying to do?

95
I have the latest version working on several Dell's and have had no problems. You made one statement that you had a lot of stuff loaded on the HP and that would be the first place I would look. All the documentation says to have as clean a machine as possible, and there are instructions on how to optimize for MACH3. The more stuff you have running on the computer the more likelyhood of having problems. The machine that is running MACH wants to have as much processor time to dedicate to the motion routines, and anything else that is running on the computer will be taking away from MACH. An older computer that you can dedicate will outperform a newer computer that is all juked up with other stuff running as that stuff all steals time that MACH needs to work. Kind of like what happens when teens try to use the cell phone or text while driving. The main task suffers because all the other tasks take too much away from it.

96
G-Code, CAD, and CAM discussions / Re: is there a name for this kind of cut
« on: September 20, 2010, 03:20:55 PM »
What kind of accuracy, and what kind of quantities? aif you make the center of the part 0,0 the code is real simple. I & J would both be 0(zero) for all the cuts. Just a matter of subtracting the cutter radius for the bore and adding the cutter radius for the OD's.I would have teh bottom of the part as Z0 and go from there.

97
General Mach Discussion / Re: Disabling an axis via mach
« on: August 18, 2010, 03:18:55 PM »
Do you use the dispense function in the same programs where you use the spindle function? If the answer is No then you could have 2 XML files configured and one would come up with the dispenser function  and the other would come up without the dispenser function. Otherwise you would have to go into the configuration and disable the C axis there.

Does this C axis configuration cause a preoblem when you jog, or does this only work under program operation?

98
What are the specs on your computer? You may need to look at what is going on in your computer and see if that is affecting A. There have been comments that 3 Axis will work fine, but that a fourth axis requires just a little more computer, or you need to look seriously at the optimization of the operating system (are you running XP or 2000) and other details like that.

99
General Mach Discussion / Re: twinned motors; 2 sharing 1 driver
« on: August 16, 2010, 10:34:56 AM »
2 drivers off of 1 signal is a much better solution than 2 motors off of 1 driver.

100
Sieg Machines / Re: KX3 spindle running slow
« on: August 13, 2010, 10:01:15 AM »
I had a problem with mine when I first set it up. It ran at max speed at anything over 2000 Rpm.

My numbers under Motor Tuning/Spindle are - Stepps Per 1175, Velocity 857.4, Accel 212.76596, Step Pulse 6.

Under pulley 4 I have mini speed 100, max speed 5000, ratio 1.

The number you want to mess with is the steps per number under motor tuning.

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