Messages

81

Newfangled Solutions Mach3 Wizards / Re: Newfangled Wizards, V2.73 Test Release

« on: February 19, 2007, 08:44:31 PM »

Ron, I  have to agree with Chuck on the material selection. Its important that when you come in that you see the name of the currently selected material without having to hit a button to see what's selected. It should also automatically remember the last selected material, and you shouldn't have to edit any files to set the default material, it should just remember and display the last one you selected.

I can see the appeal of trying to generalize it like you did to make it open ended, but I think you made it harder to use for 95% of the users that most of the time are going to use one of the materials that was previously listed. Being able to customize the underlying speeds and feeds is nice, but its not worth it to make it harder to use most of the time so you can have 100 materials, most people just won't do that, and if you need a special speed and feed for special material its easy to override the generated settings. Being able to specify the underlying speeds and feeds used for a specific material is a nice feature though.

Paul T.

82

Newfangled Solutions Mach3 Wizards / Re: Bugs in NewFangled Wizards

« on: February 13, 2007, 12:45:05 PM »

Ron-

Thanks for looking into the Z problem. It appears that the other problem I mentioned, the spindle not getting turned on in the Keyway wizard, has also been fixed in the most recent release.

One other thing I would recommend taking a look at in the Wizards is consistency of parameter names. In the Surfacing Wizard for example Rapid Height is the name of the parameter for the height of rapid x,y moves, which makes sense. However in the Drilling Wizards Traverse Height is used for the name of the height for rapid x,y moves and a pararmeter called Rapid Height is used to set the height that the drill bit moves down to towards the hole at rapid speed at the beginning of a drilling cycle.

This is pretty confusing for new users, especially ones not used to the parameters used for drilling cycles.

For the Drilling wizards I would recommend making the Rapid Height parameter be consistent with the other wizards, ie it should be the height for rapid x,y moves, and use a parameter called Approach Height to set the height that the drill bit moves down quickly to at the start of a drilling cycle.

Thanks,

Paul T.

83

Newfangled Solutions Mach3 Wizards / Re: Bugs in NewFangled Wizards

« on: February 13, 2007, 11:56:54 AM »

Ron-

With the surfacing wizard please look in my original post, all the parameters I entered are listed there, but here they are again below. The only thing I didn't specify below is I had rapid stepover selected. It looks like the Flood coolant button has been fixed in the most recent release as I am now getting an M8 to turn on the flood cooling, thanks. However if you look at the code below (just generated with the most recent release) the first rapid move is at the correct 0.1 height but on the second and all following rapid moves for some reason 0.11 is used for the rapid height.

I would strongly consider putting a Help button on every Wizard to bring up a window that briefly explains each pararmeter.

Paul T.

> For the code generated below, the material was set at 0.000", the
> Rapid Height at 0.1", and both the Depth and Step size were set at
> 0.010", but as shown in the code, in the later parts it uses a
Rapid
> height of .11", not the expected .1" over the 0.0" material top.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Paul T.
>
(Program Posted for Aluminum )
G0 G49 G40.1 G17
G80 G50 G90 G98 
G20 (Inch)
(***** Material Surfacing *****)
M6 T4
M03 S763.9
M8 (Flood On)
G00G43 H4 Z0.1
G00 Z0.1
G00 X-0.3125 Y-0.0313
G01 Z-0.01 F1.4
G01 X0.8125 F2.8
G00 Z0.11
G00 Y-0.1251
G01 Z-0.01 F1.4
G01 X-0.3125 F2.8
G00 Z0.11
G00 Y-0.2189
G01 Z-0.01 F1.4
G01 X0.8125 F2.8
G00 Z0.11
G00 Y-0.3127
G01 Z-0.01 F1.4
G01 X-0.3125 F2.8
G00 Z0.11
G00 Y-0.4065
G01 Z-0.01 F1.4
G01 X0.8125 F2.8
G00 Z0.11
G00 Y-0.5003
G01 Z-0.01 F1.4
G01 X-0.3125 F2.8
G0 Z0.1
G0 X0Y0
M5 M9
M30

84

Newfangled Solutions Mach3 Wizards / Bugs in NewFangled Wizards

« on: February 11, 2007, 09:31:56 PM »

I saw the mention of the PowerFeed wizard and was encouraged to see there was some activity to improve the wizards. Here's some bugs I posted a while ago that never got fixed:

In addition to the bugs listed below it appears that in the slotting wizard the spindle doesn't get turned on. I beleive the problem below mentioned with the coolant not getting turned on is present in several (if not all) of the wizards.

Paul T.

Brian-

The Wizards are still giving me 2 problems, when I click on the Flood
Cooling option there's no M8 placed in the resultant G code to turn
on the coolant (there is an M9 at the end turning it off though).

Also with the Surfacing wizard, the Traverse height comes out wrong
as shown in the previous post below. By necessity I have to run my
quill pretty close to the limit, so having the traverse height come
out higher than the specified setting causes me problems.

Thanks,

Paul T.

> Brian-
>
> For the code generated below, the material was set at 0.000", the
> Rapid Height at 0.1", and both the Depth and Step size were set at
> 0.010", but as shown in the code, in the later parts it uses a
Rapid
> height of .11", not the expected .1" over the 0.0" material top.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Paul T.
>
> > > (Program Posted for Aluminum )
> > > G0 G49 G40.1 G17
> > > G80 G50 G90 G98
> > > G20 (Inch)
> > > (***** Material Surfacing *****)
> > > M03 S4329
> > > G00 Z0.1
> > > G00 Z0.1
> > > G00 X-0.475 Y1.8125
> > > G01 Z-0.01 F30
> > > G01 X5.175 F60
> > > G00 Z0.11
> > > G00 Y1.25
> > > G01 Z-0.01 F30
> > > G01 X-0.475 F60
> > > G00 Z0.11
> > > G00 Y0.6875
> > > G01 Z-0.01 F30
> > > G01 X5.175 F60
> > > G00 Z0.11
> > > G00 Y0.125
> > > G01 Z-0.01 F30
> > > G01 X-0.475 F60
> > > G0 Z0.1
> > > G0 X0Y2
> > > M5 M9
> > > M30
>

85

Newfangled Solutions Mach3 Wizards / Re: Request for New Wizard

« on: January 20, 2006, 03:30:39 PM »

A general point to point wizard would be handy, but I would still like to see and "End Surfacing" wizard that let you define the stock size and location and then did its thing, like the Surfacing wizard but with the stock rotated 90 degrees.

Paul T.

86

Newfangled Solutions Mach3 Wizards / Request for New Wizard

« on: January 20, 2006, 01:19:53 PM »

Brian-

The Wizards have been very useful to us on our new CNC knee mill. We've moved almost every operation we were doing on our manual mill over to the CNC machine using the Wizards.

Here's one operation we're still doing on the manual machine that we would love to have a Wizard for.

Similar to the Surfacing operation, we often have to clean up the ends on a piece of bar stock too tall to stand up in the vice so we lie it down and clamp it long ways in the vice and use the side of an endmill to clean up and square up the ends. Kind of like the Surfacing wizard but turned on its side.

Any chance of a "End Facing" or "End Surfacing" wizard to make this end clean up easier?

Thanks,

Paul T.

87

Newfangled Solutions Mach3 Wizards / Re: Possible problem with Surfacing wizard

« on: January 20, 2006, 01:12:08 PM »

> The points are to change where the X0 Y0 is not the start point.

Whoops, a senior moment on my part, that makes more sense.

Paul T.

88

Newfangled Solutions Mach3 Wizards / Possible problem with Surfacing wizard

« on: January 19, 2006, 06:15:42 PM »

Brian-

I has posted this a while back in the Yahoo mach forum, but the forum was really busy then and it might have slipped by you, I didn't see a response.

(originally posted on Yahoo mach forum)
Brian-

When using the Surfacing Material Wizard, the starting point for me is
always the upper left hand corner of the defined material, independent
of the selection I make for Start Position.

By the way, thanks for upgrade that automatically calculates chip load
based on the tool properties.

Paul T.