Messages

51

General Mach Discussion / Re: Large files

« on: March 30, 2009, 07:17:17 AM »

Limit is 10,000,000 lines.
Hood

That will be enough.... cough cough..
I think switching the tool path display of solved my problem....
A message box popping up if more than a few thousand lines are loaded, offering a disable option,  would help the newcomer I think.

Rainer

52

General Mach Discussion / Re: New Problem, Machine Not Cutting Square

« on: March 29, 2009, 10:15:37 PM »

Do not adjust the tuning unless you are running the FULL travel. Go get a long ruler. I got a 72 inch starret aluminum straight edge with numbers for about $25.
Then chuck a needle or a pointy thing into the spindle and go to zero, then to the extreme other edge, then tune till you hit that far end. The remaining error is the maximum error you will have. Which means that if you only travel 1 inch that it's 1/72 of that error.

Then route a large square/angle into mdf. If that 's not straight, then your gantry is not aligned properly (left right side). Or something is loose and introduces backlash. One of the machines I build had backlash because a screw hit the and of the thread and did not clamp down fully. So... with larger forces in curves, that darn thing slipped back and force 0.01- .03..... Backlash where there should never be any. So don't take things for granted. Check the mechanics and tune with the largest moved you can make. You can verify with a dial, but do not think that you will be achieving the best precision only running short distances.

Mach3 does cut straight lines and round circles. I had to make that painful experience as well .
Lemo

53

General Mach Discussion / Large files

« on: March 29, 2009, 07:59:47 PM »

Is there a G Code line limit in Mach3?

And is there a way to subsequently (batch) process .nc files?

I have a few rather large g code files and would love to split them and have them processed one after another.
But I do not want to run to the machine every twenty minutes....

Cheers
Rainer

54

General Mach Discussion / Re: Cutting Circles

« on: February 02, 2009, 07:27:28 PM »

ITS ALL MACH3's FAULT!!! 

Well... cough cough.... NOT... 

Today the problem was found... The Z Axis carriage is pulled around on the gantry using a timing belt and that is linked to the carriage with a little AL block which also tightens the belt. Two 1/4 inch screws are used to lock that block onto the carriage. All was tight... but... the holes were bottomed out... HA! The darn thing was tight enough that there was no indication of a fault while manhandling it. But when the 250lbs gantry stops or accelerates quickly, then it slipped a tiny bit, thus leading to the symptoms of backlash. The holes have been set deeper, the screws tightened tighter. And the friggin flats have taken a vacation. Circles are nice and round now.

Flats -> some sort of backlash or slippage of some kind.

Next time I will rivet, braze, weld, glue, and fuse that bugger to the parts.... Did I forget a method?

Cheers
Lemo

55

General Mach Discussion / Re: Cutting Circles

« on: February 01, 2009, 08:33:27 AM »

I have a servo driven machine using 1000 line encoders and the axis is geared down 1:5. I use steel loaded timing belts which have no backlash. They are pre tensioned with 160lbs and sound like a guitar string. No movement there... per revolution of the drive shaft I get about 5 inches of travel. So I need 5000 ticks per revolution and that yields roughly 5 inches travel. And that's a theoretical 1/1000 of an inch resolution. Is there another resolution I have to be concerned about? The smooth stepper has a few settings regarding resolution and precision but due to a lack of documentation I have not bothered to dive to deep into it's settings. I run the default settings. However, the problem also shows up using Mach3. I'm in the shop today and will collect sample g-code and such. It's impossible to get closer to this without hard facts.  Ha, York, UK to New York, NY to York PA. That's a lot of York for one trip .
R

56

General Mach Discussion / Re: Cutting Circles

« on: January 31, 2009, 02:17:46 PM »

Same problem here. One side of the circle ends with a flat. If the circle is about 8 inches, the flat is about 1 inch long. We generated code with lcam, cut2d from vectric and with Rhinocam. We used lines segments to create the circles, and we used arcs to create the circles. We used a stepper based machine and a servo based machine. Within small differences, the problem staid the same. We continue to look into paramaters here and willa lso try and run EMC on a PC to see if there is a mach problem. It seems that this issue is a tricky one...
Cheers
Rainer

PS:Nice meeting you in York Graham, Brian, and the rest of the gang!

57

Flash Screens / Re: New Flash Docs?

« on: November 13, 2008, 02:33:47 PM »

Jason informed me that the "Refreash" is not necessarily wrong, but, doing the individual LEDs as above is a Better, more effecient way to do it.

scott

It's always correct to minimize system impact to save the cpu some time. I think your hint not to use the 'blanket' function but to address each LED on it's own is a good advice. Bad for lazy coders, good for the system
L

58

General Mach Discussion / Re: Bugs in Mach 3.42.015

« on: November 12, 2008, 10:55:11 AM »

second:
Limit switches are like e-stop switches. They protect the maximum envelope the system can move without damaging itself. Even if they can be used/defined as homing as well, they are meant as 'not to be touched'. Actually it's a pita to move a system out of the triggered limit switches.
Lemo

59

General Mach Discussion / Re: Can someone explain the current draw of these stepper motors, please.

« on: November 11, 2008, 01:06:11 PM »

The GEcko's reduce the current when not moving to prevent motor overheating which makes a look at the 'real' and the current while idling impossible. The system running cannot be measured as DC current as it's a pulsed system you are observing (AC). A syst4em where the frequency is not constant. The Gecko's also draw from the power source with something like 25KHz.... so measuring the current from the power supply to the gecko is difficult as well. There are very good explanations on the gecko site for all of this.
I measure the ac current of my power supply to the wall outlet and see how much energy goes into the entire system. When only one axis moves, I have an indication on how much energy is used by that component of the entire system. Still, estimated...
Cheers
Lemo

60

Flash Screens / Re: New Flash Docs?

« on: November 09, 2008, 08:45:30 PM »

Why not simply a wiki... Fills continuously and doesn't (well... should not...) get out of sync with the releases and or product updates.
Lemo