Messages

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General Mach Discussion / Re: Selecting number of "instances" of a program (hard to describe in a subject)!

« on: July 04, 2012, 09:36:11 AM »

Alex,

As I'm looking through your code, I'm having a really hard time following what's going on.  Is there a good guide anywhere on how mach 3 handles variables and subroutines?  Perhaps you could comment your code a bit more or describe a general code flow?

At the end of the day, I'm hesitant to set my look ahead to 1 but it's probably not a bad idea to understand how this works.

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General Mach Discussion / Re: Selecting number of "instances" of a program (hard to describe in a subject)!

« on: July 03, 2012, 12:11:22 PM »

Yes, I've spoken with a few people and it seems like there's only complicated ways to do this.  I'll probably just output 3 or 4 versions of the code when I generate the files - 1 part, 2 parts, 3 parts or 4 parts.  I'll see if I can program a macro or something to do it in my CAM software.

3

General Mach Discussion / Re: Why do my inside cuts look this way?

« on: July 03, 2012, 11:31:00 AM »

I'll check the things you guys mentioned, but the odd thing is it's always on inside profiles.......I can cut a outside profile and it works fine.

When going around an outside corner, CAM software usually uses an arc in the tool path, even with a square corner leading to a gentler acceleration.  What's the accell settings for your X & Y axes?

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General Mach Discussion / Re: Defining workpiece units in toolpath display.

« on: July 02, 2012, 09:30:26 PM »

AFAIK, the tool path display only displays tool paths, not work pieces.  You could write some G-code to draw the lines that you want though to fake it out.

e.g. I think this would do it:

G01 X2.45 F100
Y0.5
X0
Y0
M30

Beware that this is very quick and dirty code with no safety block and no Z movement.  It would not cut the part you describe as it doesn't have any tool diameter compensation.

5

General Mach Discussion / Re: Why do my inside cuts look this way?

« on: July 02, 2012, 09:21:04 PM »

Does the tool path look correct in Mach 3?

If it does and you're using CV mode and your accel could be too slow on one axis (but not the other) to keep up with your feed rate, Mach 3 will round the corners as it's trying to pick up speed to change directions while maintaining your feed rate.  If this is indeed what's causing your troubles, you could try the "exact stop on angles greater than" setting and set it to perhaps 89 degrees and see if that fixes it.

6

General Mach Discussion / Selecting number of "instances" of a program (hard to describe in a subject)!

« on: June 30, 2012, 09:22:24 AM »

Hi all, first post on the site. I've been using Mach 3 for a bit over a year now and have basically been learning G-code as I need it and don't really know what to search on for this topic.

I've got a part I'm making using a vacuum fixture to hold down and it uses 4 tools total.  I'm starting to get orders and re-orders for multiples and what I'd like to do is make a vacuum fixture with three or four vacuum hold down locations and use offsets to machine each part with the tool that's loaded.  i.e., I'd like it to do the 1/4" square operation on all the boards, then the 1/2" round operation on all the boards etc. in order to save time on tool changes.  I'd also like to set up the program so that it's written for four copies but I can select how many copies I actually want make at run time.  I'm using VisualMill for my CAM and when using multiple offsets, what it does is e.g. output G59P1, then the stream of G-code, then G59P2 and the same stream of G-code etc. for as many instances as you select.

Is there some relatively simple way I could modify the G-code so I could enter a variable at the start of the G-code (say a number between 1 and 4) and use some sort of loop to actually cut the parts?

The brute force method would be to simply output 4 files each time I post code but that seems rather inelegant to me.   The other thought I just had would be to output a file for each tool operation and wrap it in a loop.  This adds loading the code at each tool change though. Any ideas on how to start searching for a solution?