Messages

11

General Mach Discussion / Little video of etching PCB. Mach ain't just for heavy metal!

« on: October 29, 2007, 12:56:52 AM »

I have some UTube videos up of making a muffin company sign and I just filmed the making of a PCB. This is for a DIP board but I'll be adding video for surface mount tomorrow. Sometime in the next week or two I'll edit the many bits into a primer for routing PCBs. For now there's just two parts (about 4 minutes total) of raw footage - one checking runout (can you say ZERO!) and the other the start of the etching MOP.

I made the traces 0.014" and most of the pads 0.060" but I can do quite a bit smaller (with Mach's help of course!).

Mach ain't just for "heavy metal".

Runout
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nzSjIV9tr3E

Etching
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VUDW5pQbxAY

The muffin sign video is in the Artsoft group already but for those not really up on youtube (like me until I actually put videos up)

Part 1 - introducing the software - ~5 minutes
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M9fG8trDLxQ

part 2 - V-Carving ~8 minutes
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xtmUbquYuuI

12

General Mach Discussion / Re: Jerky Movement

« on: October 17, 2007, 04:18:04 PM »

Is constant velocity turned on? Exact Stop mode will give herky-jerky movements.

13

General Mach Discussion / Re: New Computer w/ no parallel port

« on: September 12, 2007, 10:29:25 AM »

I do microcontroller programming and my programmer uses the parallel port. Problem is, so does my printer! So, I bought a Lava PCI parallel port card and added a second port. It works perfectly and although I don't use it for mach (different computer) I cannot imagine any problems the card would create. The only hard part is finding the port address for software that wants the address instead of the LPT number but that's actually easy - just open up control panel->Hardware->Device Manager then look at the properties for the card. Under "resources" the address range will be listed, just use the first hex number. Mine shows 8C00-8C07 so I use 8C00.

edit: Actually, you have a Dell.. Dell like to do things in a non-standard way (or at least, they have in the past). Best to call them and ask if a PCI parallel port card will actually function in the computer and, if so, which brands are known to work. For instance, my buddy bought a dell 4-5 years ago and after a while his kids had Win 98 all messed up.  He bought win 98 from the local store (del charged extra for the actual DISK for windows so he didn't have theirs) and tried unsuccessfully to install. It took a call to Dell support for him to find out the debug commands required to allow a non-Dell Windows to be installed (I was competely floored by this as I've been into computers since '79 and had never heard of such a thing). So, make that call - it may just not be possible to have a parallel port (though I'd be floored a second time if that were true).

14

General Mach Discussion / Re: Tool change but no height change

« on: March 07, 2007, 07:08:36 PM »

Well, that didn't work either. I read up some on G43/49 and figured out the rest of it. VM's mach 3 post file didn't add the G43[tool register #] to the gcode so it had no command to set the length offset. I muddled through it and now it seems to be working properly.

I had a feeling it wouldn't be a problem with Mach!

15

General Mach Discussion / Re: Tool change but no height change

« on: March 07, 2007, 06:34:07 PM »

Well duh. I dunno how I missed it when I was looking up the gcodes but, G49 is cancel length offset. Time to head out to the shed and try again!

16

General Mach Discussion / Re: Tool change but no height change

« on: March 07, 2007, 05:23:13 PM »

Actually, thats what the post originally put out. I tried swapping them manually as well, but no difference.

17

General Mach Discussion / Tool change but no height change

« on: March 07, 2007, 02:22:03 PM »

I'm a newb so I don't really know where this problem originates. I was using the Vcarve demo before and had all the tool heights in the mach3 tooltable. When a tool change was called for it automatically adjusted the Z DRO to match the new tool.

Well, of course I uninstalled vcarve (good, just can't afford it yet) and I'm using VM5 now. I also updated mach3 to 2.0.053 at the same time. Now when I get a tool change it waits for me to swap out and hit cycle start etc, but it doesn't actually do anything to the Z DRO. So when I change from my 2 inch long 1/2" bit to the .375 inch long 1/8" bit the .375 ends up cutting air far above the work. I did find that if I hit pause right after the tool change then click the tool number and hit enter, the DRO is changed and everything works as expected. So it seems mach knows what tool number to use, but doesn't pay any attention to the height offset.

Now, I know its more than likely that its something about the VM5 post instead of Mach but I'm clueless as to what to look for.

Here's the start of a file with the tool change

G00 G49 G40.1 G17 G80 G50 G90
G20
(Engraving)
T3 M6
M03 S10000
G00 Z0.0625

Anything important missing there?

18

General Mach Discussion / Re: <--Newb! Scorpion tutorial - scale changes when loaded (m2)

« on: February 19, 2007, 11:16:25 PM »

Well, I switched to the roadrunner example and that worked perfectly. Dunno whats up with the scorpion and its too late to be making all that noise out in the shed so I won't be able to play again until tomorrow. Good news is, I have the next two days off!

I also thing I figured out why Mach3 wouldn't move the machine. The XML setup file looks buggered - so I did a copy and paste from the vendor instead of "save target as" like they say to do. Now it looks proper. We'll see tomorrow!

19

General Mach Discussion / <--Newb! Scorpion tutorial - scale changes when loaded (m2)

« on: February 19, 2007, 09:03:36 PM »

I' just setting up my first CNC machine, so I'm fairly close to completely lost

Anyway, I got everything set up and running perfectly (as far as I can tell) without GCode loaded. All the axis travel in the proper directions and exactly the right distances. I set a dial micrometer up and tested by jogging around and making sure the DRO and the dial micrometer agree. The soft limits work perfectly etc.

Then, I loaded the scorpion demo as per the instructions and suddenly the DROs report FAR more movement than is really happening. I move about 1" and the soft limits kick in, as if I'd move over 25". If I manually jog, the same thing happens.

I've been perusing the Mach 2 manual and I just can't seem to find anything that tells me what to do about this. There is a paragraph on scaling, but it doesn't really say anything useful.

Any hints?

P.S. This is a licenced version. I have Mach 3 as well, but I can't seem to get that to move the machine at all. I figure I'll use mach 2 until I understand a fair bit of it, then see what I can do to get mach 3 working.