Messages

4751

General Mach Discussion / Re: rotate the toolpath display

« on: December 04, 2011, 02:33:16 PM »

Normal mouse assignments are

Left  >>>   Oribital pan (rotate)

Center >>  ZOOM

Right   >> XY pan

Yours may be different . Try the other buttons one at a time.

(;-) TP

4752

General Mach Discussion / Re: Mach3 digitizing wizard instructions and set up

« on: December 04, 2011, 02:19:12 PM »

To wire up the Probe you would use an input pin on the Gecko that was not being used. One wire to teh pin and the other end to a common.

Then assign the port and pin number in Mach3 config so mach knows where to look for it.

Which Wizard are you looking at? There was a ture Wizard that comes up under the Wizards and there is a Plugin routine that Art wrote.

(;-) TP

4753

General Mach Discussion / Re: How to reverse axis direction ?

« on: December 04, 2011, 02:01:26 PM »

Based on the picture you have your axis movements setup BACKWARDS to normal convention.

Just a thought, (;-) TP

4754

General Mach Discussion / Re: Mach3 digitizing wizard instructions and set up

« on: December 04, 2011, 01:56:00 PM »

IF you are just gathering points disreguard the Gcode and Nurbs comments . (;-) I thought you were going to Machine the part when done.

Yes the Mach3 Probing Wizard will ouput an XYZ point cloud  file that you can use.

(;-) TP

4755

Newfangled Solutions Mach3 Wizards / Re: Machine jumps when in program and looking at last wizard

« on: December 04, 2011, 01:36:34 PM »

YEs you are correct you MUST NOT reopen the wizard while Mach3 is cutting.

DID your old miltronics even have Wizards???

Also when you are running outside controller cards such as SS or the DSMP you are depending on the PROGRAMMER that wrote the interface(plugin) that allows Mach3 to talk to teh outside controller. Who knows HOW the programmer did the important functions such as feedhold or such. That puts it in the responcibility of the programmer that writes the interface NOT mach3.


EVEN changing screens can be risky even thought I do do it at times. Depends on what screen you're changing to.

Feedhold is NOT like other commerial controllers as well . You press the button then WAIT for mach3 to come to a safe halt and that could be many seconds depending on the Gcode and the look ahead buffer settings. It has to find a safe point in the buffer to stop at so it can retain the positional values.

IF you press STOP while Mach is moving you have lost postional reference and will need to refhome or reset the part origin.

To add these functions could vary a great deal on outside controllers running with MAch3. It all depends on the interface and the controller's capabilty.

(;-) TP

4756

General Mach Discussion / Re: Mach3 digitizing wizard instructions and set up

« on: December 04, 2011, 01:04:43 PM »

RICH, where is the faith(;-) I did that log ago when testing the G31. Oldest son send down a very high dollar probe to test accuracy with. All went well for about an hour ,then MACH did a NONO and that was about  a $1000 mistake ( cost of repairs)  (;-)

Have  learned that is is NOT good to mix Gcode and CB in the same sentence(;-)

Straight Gcode probing is "VERY" dependable. I can very quickly gather many thousands of points without a glitch or a missed point.

Can't say the same thing for macro probing (crunch).

Ian Please keep the Check as I KNOW I still owe you many beers for all your help AND teaching (;-)

Just a thought or three, (;-) TP

4757

General Mach Discussion / Re: Mach3 digitizing wizard instructions and set up

« on: December 04, 2011, 12:49:58 PM »

HIYA Jack, Yes I understand what you are trying to do. The point I was making is that point probing in MACH can be a very tidious process and very time consuming to gather very detail shapes (high resolution).

You would probably have to set up a 4th axis to auto rotate the parts to gather ALL the data at one setting. That would make the final points file all relative to the base coords and it stay very accurate. OR you could do separate scans and then merge them into points file.

The point I was making with the nurbs is you will need to make sure that the final output does not contain NURBS shapes as MACH3 cannot process a nurb in the Gcode side it only understands lines and arcs in Gcode.

Other controllers can deal with nurbs directly in Gcode but not Mach3.

Please keep us up to date on your project, (;-)TP

4758

Newfangled Solutions Mach3 Wizards / Re: Machine jumps when in program and looking at last wizard

« on: December 04, 2011, 11:52:23 AM »

Mach3 at $159.00 is the deal of the century for hobbiest and simple comercial ventures as long as you understand the limitations.

IF I were to start a new comercial venture that required CNC machines it would be with a Comercial CNC machine using a known  CNC controller such as Fanuc,Haas,Mazak,etc,etc. That way you have a Machine designed for such work. The machines HAVE to work up to 24/7 and be stone dependable and repeatable.

NOW that said if I had to, "Very Low Budget" I would use mach3 BUT I also would have to understand the quirks that come along with it. Some type simple CNC would never have much of a problem and MACH3 would work very well.

Other type of CNC you would suffer greatly in Time and aggravation.

MACH4 and building your on GUI ?? NOT EVEN AN OPTION. IF the controller is not ready OUT OF THE BOX what good is it to an OWNER / machinist. The idea is to MAKE PARTS not spend all your time working on the machine that makes parts.

Just my mileage, your milage may vary do to local conditions, (;-) TP

4759

General Mach Discussion / Re: Mach3 digitizing wizard instructions and set up

« on: December 04, 2011, 11:40:45 AM »

I hope you have a LOT of Time on your hands as Point probing in Mach3 is a painfully slow process (;-) And looking at your SAMPLE product it is not going to work well WITHOUT a LOT of work.

Also further refinement is needed as MACH3 can not understand NURBS it only works in SIMPLE lines and arcs.

Just a thought, (;-) TP

4760

General Mach Discussion / Re: DRO anomoly with g68

« on: December 04, 2011, 11:31:22 AM »

Here is the test sample I used based on your code. Please let me know what YOU find testing it.

What is your look ahead setting???

It works here without the Quirk  V.020.

(;-) TP