Topics

41

General Mach Discussion / Lathe screen, what do you want to see.

« on: January 10, 2010, 01:37:45 PM »

What would you want to see for the standard lathe screen?
My personal preference would be a screen similar to mill in layout and with most day to day functions on the main page and other pages for the not so common/occasional tasks and diagnostics etc

How would you have the screen? 
What would you want on the pages?
How many different pages?
Similar to Mill layout or similar to the way the lathe screen is now or if neither what would you like?

Hood

42

General Mach Discussion / What needs fixed in Turn?

« on: December 31, 2009, 04:20:46 AM »

Just a thread to ask what you want fixed in Turn.
For me
CSS needs fixed
Need DRO to show tool offset number
Need Front/ Rear toolpost fixed
Need extents in toolpath fixed
Need Soft limits fixed

I am sure there are more but cant think now.
Hopefully we will get some work done to Turn this year.

Hood

43

Show"N"Tell ( What you have made with your CNC machine.) / First go at small coil

« on: August 04, 2009, 11:03:43 AM »

Usually I wind coils between 45mm long on 3.2mm dia core with 0.1mm dia wire to 500mm long on 25mm dia core with 0.7mm dia wire. I have just however done one for a new project that my client is working with me on. The core is 0.5mm dia, wire 0.1mm dia it is 20mm long and 6000turns.
 Had to adapt the coil winder I made to add a slaved spindle so that I could hold the core in tension whilst I was winding, worked pretty well I think
Hood

44

PoKeys / How I made my pendant.

« on: June 15, 2009, 01:55:08 PM »

Attached is a word document that details my pendant.

Hood

45

General Mach Discussion / Printed manual

« on: April 27, 2009, 01:59:00 PM »

There is a printed version of the Mach manual available, see this thread  http://www.machsupport.com/forum/index.php/topic,11292.0.html
Just thought I would post a link to this as possibly it may not be seen by as many people as it would if in the General forum.
Hood

46

Show"N"Tell ( What you have made with your CNC machine.) / Made some bits for this on my mill and lathe

« on: April 17, 2009, 07:38:38 PM »

Just finished this a few days ago, shaft and nut, rudder flanges, pintle and bush, tiller arm and lots of other stuff was made on my Mill and Lathe, all 316 stainless.
Hood

47

General Mach Discussion / Mach MAD plugin, what are you using it for?

« on: March 03, 2009, 03:26:44 PM »

Just wondering who is using Mach MAD plugin that Scott did and what uses they are putting it to.
 I have  not had a lot of time recently to mess too much with it but I have used it for a few things that were a real PITA before, one of which is triggering macros from external buttons. This is great as it means I can have my RefAll button  working from an external button, also have plans for a few others when I get some work done on the mill
 The labels also will be a nice feature as you can change the text at the side of  a LED to show what the state change means, for example in my Mill screen I had to make lots of different LEDs  with text in them to show whether they were on or off, with the labels feature it means the text at the side of the LED can change so standard LEDs can be used saving a lot of time when making a screen.
 One thing that would be nice is to have the Labels and Macros that trigger from User  LEDs capable of being triggered by OEM LEDs but not sure how easy that would be to implement in the plugin, probably a PITA. At the moment you need to use a Brain to look at an input and then trigger and User LED, so it just adds another layer which wouldnt be needed if OEM LEDs could be used. Then again I am just getting greedy as the cost of the plugin has been payed for just in the ability to call the macros from the external buttons IMO.

 So anyway , what uses are others using MAD for?

Hood

48

Show"N"Tell ( Your Machines) / My Balding Beaver

« on: January 22, 2009, 07:36:48 PM »

Better explain the title first, it is a Beaver NC5 mill that was manufactured by Balding Engineering

I bought the mill from eBay, it cost me £208 and then a further £500 to get it transported from Wales up to Scotland. Originally it had a Heidenhain 145 control and Contraves DC servo drives and motors. There was a Z axis fault but a clean of the drive contacts sorted that out and I was able to test things out, all axis moved freely and rapids were 8m/min. Originally I had intended keeping the DC motors and drives but they whistled at a frequency that really annoyed me so they had to go. I sold the control and drives on eBay and got around £500 for them. I picked up some 1.5KW and 3KW AC Servos and drives from eBay  
 The cabinet that was on the Beaver was at the back and huge, it was far too big for the small workshop so I fitted the drives into one of the old cabinets I had from the Bridgeport and mounted it to the side, above that I fitted an electrical box which houses the computer and breakouts etc. I am using the pico motherboard, a SmoothStepper, a PMDX122 and and Acustep Breakout boards, a few relay circuits I bought and a few I made and finally a PLC. At the moment I am only using the analogue Inputs to the PLC, this will let me have load meters in Mach for all of my motors but future plans include a tool changer so I will need some of the inputs on the PLC for that.
 My workshop is cramped so the pics are not that great but heres some anyway. I am about a week away from getting it completed but afraid finding that weeks worth of time is a problem, maybe as the weather warms I will spend more time in the evening at the workshop.

Hood

49

PoKeys / Any one tried a MPG with the PoKeys?

« on: December 02, 2008, 04:39:15 PM »

I fitted up my pendant the last day and the MPG worked after a fashion, as long as I didnt wind too fast it was fine, if I wound a bit to fast it would just stop responding.
Anyone else tried it?

Hood

50

PoKeys / Digital OutPut problem

« on: November 25, 2008, 05:35:14 PM »

I am hoping Boris or someone else can shed some light on this. I have a video uploaded to youtube if you click on the link you will see it.
 I am using a digital output to power a pot for an analogue input.
What happens is I connect the USB and go into the PoKeys software and connect, I look at the analogue  input and as you will see with the pot turned up full there is less than  a 1/4 of the bar showing. I exit the analogue tools page and  without doing anything else I press Send to Device, I then look and the analogue is fine. I close the software, unplug USB, Plug USB back in and have to go through the same procedure again to get the digital output powering the analogue input properly. When its working the digital OutPut is putting out the correct 3.3v but when its not then its only putting out 0.6v.

Hood

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fd-ZMVyVddU