Messages

31

Show"N"Tell ( What you have made with your CNC machine.) / Re: Pinewood Derby Car

« on: January 27, 2013, 08:51:54 PM »

Since some of you have asked for the pinewood derby car I made in this youtube video: http://youtu.be/We1OgobWpSE

I thought I'd make a page on my site so others could have fun making it on their CNC machines.

The car is scaled to the maximum race standards so you shouldn't have to do any rework. Just make your setups and cut the file.

Download link:  http://www.fendleyautomation.com/downloads.html

  If you have a Pinewood derby car you'd like to share, feel free to contact me though my site and I'll add it to our page with a link to yours. Have fun racing!

Any chance of getting a copy in stl format?

John

32

Video P*r*o*b*i*n*g / Re: Mach 3 Probing

« on: January 22, 2013, 11:07:53 PM »

it would be in the button script, I think.

Operator/Edit Button Script
then click on the button

John

33

General Mach Discussion / Re: struggling with the digitize wizard.

« on: January 21, 2013, 11:05:28 PM »

well....fairly dirty tho quick isnt quit it as my process involves running down to friends cabinet shop in the middle of the process.  

First I take the triplet file and load it into mach cloud, I beat it with a stick and get machcloud to deposit a stl on my desktop.  I take the stl and stick it on a thumb drive and go to friends cabinet shop where he has aspire, load the stil in aspire and add the vcarved logo on top, in setting up the toolpath I click the option to 'project tool path on 3d model" or some such, then I take the tool path back home and carve it.
Kinda a pain but until I win the lotto, aspire is out of my reach.

John

ps setting the z zero for the vcarve must be done very very carefully damhik

34

General Mach Discussion / Re: Issues getting Mach3 to recognise my .tap files

« on: January 21, 2013, 11:21:13 AM »

The 100sq.tap is fine, the second one looks like a binary file full of nulls.  You should be able to open a proper tap file with notepad and read the commands. Not so with adv_shape1.tap.

John

ps, check if you can read them on your computer before putting them on the thumb drive and that will let you know if its the thumb drive  or something else.

35

General Mach Discussion / Re: struggling with the digitize wizard.

« on: January 20, 2013, 09:46:37 PM »

Here are a couple shots from my cell phone, sorry they are so fuzzy.

The process does appear to work ok, I allowed it to cut too deeply for the way the text below was crammed together.

I'll be trying again, and again. Something about this appeals to me.


John

36

General Mach Discussion / Re: struggling with the digitize wizard.

« on: January 20, 2013, 03:35:54 PM »

Actually I figured it was a Me problem. Somehow I messed up the origin point between gathering the point cloud and carving the actual logo. I've been practicing on an old bb gun stock. first try was offset, second side seemed to work well, but I think my z 0 was a little low, supposed to carve .02 deep and it was closer to .05, this logo has some really crowded lettering at the bottom and I busted out the wood between the letters.  I'm thinking I carved too deep and too fast for this tiny bit, I'm using a 30* engraving bit with a .003 dia tip.  Guess I need to find a friend who has a "pile of old stocks" for more practicing.

John

37

General Mach Discussion / Re: struggling with the digitize wizard.

« on: January 20, 2013, 08:39:15 AM »

thanks.

I'm trying to carve a logo on the side of a gun  stock.  after probing yesterday, which seemed to go just fine.  The carving seemed to be offset from the original surface.  Any suggestions?

John

P.s. I'll be trying again today, this time probing a 3x3 area from x0y0 bottom left of area as the wizard does it. Then I'll try placing "00" in the center of the scanned area and carving.  There just has to be a way to do this.

38

General Mach Discussion / Re: struggling with the digitize wizard.

« on: January 19, 2013, 07:27:49 PM »

I got the digitize wizard to function for me by setting z0 a little above the surface of the area to be probed, set the travel height to .25 above that and probe depth to -1.5, ( your screen shot shows yours set to +1.5 maybe therein?) 

it did work but, I'm not sure I'm using it right.  the finished cloud converted to stl just fine, I projected a v-carve path onto it, but it came out out of position on the work area.  I'm trying to carve the pow-mia logo on a gun stock.

Oh did I mention, I dont own a proper probe, just a tool setter plate, I taped some aluminum foil to the surface of the stock, conected my touch plate to it and used the bit as a probe.
seemed to work fairly well as far as I got with it that is.

John

39

General Mach Discussion / Re: HELP NEEDED URGENT

« on: January 15, 2013, 11:24:41 AM »

From that pdf


The System4C board uses a 12 KHz charge pump signal from the controlling software to operate the
enable line on all four driver circuits. This signal uses pin1 from the parallel port for its input and must
be setup in your software configuration. When the signal is present the red enable light will illuminate
showing that the board is active.


so is it illuminated?

John

ps, just a thought, Oh, and do the motors lockup?

40

G-Code, CAD, and CAM discussions / Re: continuous motion on a Zenbot

« on: January 12, 2013, 11:17:39 PM »

Are you in exact stop mode? Or constant velocity mode under general config? 

John