Messages

21

General Mach Discussion / Creating wizards

« on: November 21, 2014, 04:25:25 PM »

I have my lathe converted and am working my way through the wizards in Mach3.  I am wondering how theses wizards are created.  I will soon try and write a G code program, say to make a pulley, but how would I create a wizard so I could just enter diameter, shaft size etc, rather than have to go through the program line by line to change a program that was created for a different size pulley?

Thanks, Dennis

22

General Mach Discussion / Mach3 Manual

« on: November 13, 2014, 11:07:26 PM »

Are there any manuals for Mach3 for a lathe out there other than the one on this site?  Something along the lines of " when we say X dro we mean the one on the left" for when there seem to be two X dro's on the screen at the same time.  I know, I know, I make a lot of beginners feel good.

23

General Mach Discussion / Re: Lathe Wizard question

« on: November 13, 2014, 10:50:11 PM »

I was using a z clearance of .25.  As suggested by Hood I adjusted the Z clearance to just a bit more than the roughing cut and the X cut only starts that amount beyond the centre of the piece.  So I guess that is just the way the wizard works.  If you want to start your cut at the centre of the piece you have to set X Start equal to Z clearance.  I can live with that idiosyncrasy of the program I just wish I knew why it worked that way.
Tool tip radius?  I have not looked at that, need to learn to walk before I try running.

Now to try and understand machine coordinates and program coordinates.

24

General Mach Discussion / Lathe Wizard question

« on: November 12, 2014, 11:43:49 PM »

I am using Mach3 Lathe and getting ready to make my first cut.  Thought I would start out with the OD Facing wizard.

I set X Start to zero to face from the centre outward.  However the simulation always starts X beyond the centre line by the amount I have entered for Z Clearance.  This in radius mode.  If I am in diameter mode X starts beyond the centre line by twice the amount I have entered for Z Clearance.

I can get the wizard to work by entering values for X Start based on the above rules but I would like to understand why I cannot use zero for X Start.  Is this just the way the wizard works or am I missing something.

Dennis

25

General Mach Discussion / Problems with jog

« on: November 05, 2014, 05:30:51 PM »

I am converting my lathe to CNC and going through the configuring process.  The controller is from Camtronics and uses the Gecko 540 board.  So far things seem to be OK except the jog function does not work, jog increment works fine, jog does not respond.  I am not sure where to look to try and solve this problem.  I have certainly tried a lot of things that do not work.  When I first loaded Mach3, and no controller attached or configuration changes made, jog seemed to work in that when I pressed the arrow keys the X and Z readouts on the screen changed.

Where should I start looking to solve this problem?

Thanks, Dennis