Messages

11

General Mach Discussion / Loading a radius cutter into the tool table

« on: May 15, 2013, 11:24:14 PM »

i am trying to load a cutter into the tool table and as it is a radius cutter with a point on it when i touch off the tool i then need the z to travel a further -1.5mm to get the cutter cutting correctly when cutting.

i have tried to enter -1.5 into the height wear section of the tool table but that doesn't seem to work.  sort of just addding the extra to my measured tool offset is there a better way?

i would have just expected that i would zero off the tool as usual then add a figure into the 'height wear' and hey presto it works.  but no cigar.

12

General Mach Discussion / Re: please help before i burn the lot

« on: May 04, 2013, 09:03:34 AM »

The keygrabber has an ipac programmer in the drop downs but can't get it to work. It seems to work good enough for now. Would use pokeys if I had to do it again

13

General Mach Discussion / Re: Random wrong direction axis moves

« on: April 30, 2013, 08:46:37 AM »

I have similiar problems every now and then. Always after a tool change. Usually the table will go to correct x/y position then before the z move it fires off in the wrong direction and cuts the part 6 or so inches away from the correct position. I just press stop, jog to a safe z then run from the last tool change and all is well. It never looses position it anything just has a brain fart

14

General Mach Discussion / Re: please help before i burn the lot

« on: April 30, 2013, 08:37:50 AM »

Ok seems like keygrabber no longer (as far as I can work out) programs ipac.

15

General Mach Discussion / Re: please help before i burn the lot

« on: April 28, 2013, 09:25:19 AM »

just reread the progaming bit but my ipac looks very different to the one in the picture

will have a look for the jumper in question tomorow

16

General Mach Discussion / Re: please help before i burn the lot

« on: April 28, 2013, 09:21:04 AM »

ok i have had a go at changing my ipac via keygrabber as per the link posted but all i get is that it can't connect to the keyboard device

any ideas?

17

General Mach Discussion / Re: please help before i burn the lot

« on: April 27, 2013, 08:43:45 AM »

Thanks. Have just read through it will have another go tomorrow at programming the ipac

18

General Mach Discussion / Re: please help before i burn the lot

« on: April 26, 2013, 01:40:52 AM »

Well I managed to sort of get it sorted. All the buttons I want have a button assigned and work on my console. I now only have 3 button that lost there graphics for reasons unknown. I am not game to try and get them back as it will end up worse knowing how crap that screens program is.
Now my pc will not shut down at all for some reason.
I now have to turn keygrabber on and off if I want to use the keyboard for other things. Still far from great.

Is the is the pokey thing you mentioned ?
http://www.poscope.com/pokeys56u


The mach2 manual link above didn't go anywhere for me.

19

General Mach Discussion / Re: please help before i burn the lot

« on: April 19, 2013, 09:25:22 AM »

ok, so how does keybragger work?
i opended it earlier but it has no instructions that i can find.

also notice the source key cant be anything like alt-

so would i set it up like this
set all the hotkeys to things like alt- in mach3
set up the ipac to use std letters like a, b,c etc
use the key grabber to tell mach3 that a then equals alt-

if that is right how do i either create the keygrabber file and incorporate it into my screenset.

cant work out how to open a screenset into keygrabber.

20

General Mach Discussion / please help before i burn the lot

« on: April 19, 2013, 08:40:33 AM »

hey guys,.  i am making a custom consol and am using an ipac keyboard encoder.

first it took me ages to work out the ipac software they send with the unit was not compatable with the board.

now i have issues with hot keys.

i want to use my own hotkeys and have downloaded screens4 and machscreen,  both programs are the worst things i have ever used.

i have been at it for near on 4 hours and i just cant get a screen to take.  they alway stuff up in one way or another.  you click somewere and new buttons pop up that you don't want.  the background moves around all the time.

i would not be lying if i said i have opened and closed a mach3 screen 100 times and have got no further that changing 3 or 4 hot keys.


then when i use mach3screen it keeps telling me about duplicate hotkeys so that is giving me grief as well.  i have been trying to use odd keys like alt= and the lik but still get the error.

ithe more i play around with all this the more i wish i never started a cnc conversion.  should have just brought something comercially available. the amount of hours of my life i have lost trying to work through stupid crap like this would considerably outweigh the extra cost.  i guess for some it is the journey and others the destination.  for me its the destination, i am hating this journery more and more each day.

rant over.  thanks in advance