Messages

11

Mach4 General Discussion / Tool Height offsets ignored?

« on: October 04, 2017, 03:34:11 AM »

I'm either missing something fundamental that is different to the way Mach4 works over Mach3, or there is something wrong.

I have all my tools in dedicated holders with my Tool1 my Haimer 3D dial gauge. All have their respective lengths loaded into the tool table.

Now to set up a job, I use a Haimer 3D dial gauge to indicate my parts to set up a G54 position. X,Y,Z....zero the DRO out in Mach3 and then load program and run. All's good. All tool H offsets are taken into account just as you would expect.

In Mach4 the exact same offsets have been set up in the tool table. So then I go and indicate off the part and zero out the DRO's with tool #1.

But when I run the program Mach4 seems to ignore the tool H even though it is displayed as the active tool. So far the program just wants to cut air at what seems some arbitrary height.

With further reading and checking, if I indicate off something and zero out the DRO, and then switch tool number, the ofsets do not update as the manual says they should and as they do in Mach3.

I've done some searching, but all I can find is help using a probe, or setting up a fixture. I want to use G54 for the quick one off jobs.

Any help getting this worked out iis greatly appreciated.

12

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Erratic Feedrate When Cutting Spline Lines

« on: October 01, 2017, 01:49:24 AM »

I'm pretty new to Mach4 so forgive me if this is obvious to everyone but me. I don't want to break anything on my setup so I'm perhaps being overly cautious.

Right now I just have CV turned on in the main Mach4 config. Not in the CV Wizard. Am I correct in assuming that this will provide a generic CV profile that Mach will use?

When I install the 2 files that Chaoticone provided into the Mach4 Wizards folder and run it like any other wizard it will populate the Wizard CV table with more optimised settings based on what I input, and if I check "Use CV" here then it will use these figures? If I uncheck the box then it goes back to the generic CV from the main Config?

Is it advised to copy my profile and work with the copy when I'm doing something like this?

13

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Erratic Feedrate When Cutting Spline Lines

« on: September 30, 2017, 07:50:31 PM »

Had a look at those papers but it makes my head hurt.

14

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Erratic Feedrate When Cutting Spline Lines

« on: September 28, 2017, 06:25:12 PM »

I too work in mm, so have been reading this post with interest and have had a look at the document that Mauri uploaded.

I haven'd installed the wizard onto my machine yet, but have a question about the output into the table. For instance take the following output generated in inches.

Angle_100=6.000000
Angle_101=6.000000
Angle_102=6.000000
Angle_103=5.000000
Angle_104=5.000000
Angle_105=5.000000

Would I input values into my table as such for metric?

Angle_100=152.4
Angle_101=152.4
Angle_102=152.4
Angle_103=127
Angle_104=127
Angle_105=127

15

Feature Requests / Description Column in Fixtire Offfset Table

« on: August 01, 2017, 09:11:48 PM »

I just installed Mach4 and setting up my machine and noticed that the Mach4 Fixture table doesn't have the description column like Mach3 has.

I find that really handy to remember what and where I had "set ups" on my table.

16

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Setting WCS with Haimer 3D

« on: July 30, 2017, 01:27:14 AM »

This sounds very much like the issue I had in my post the other day. I'll have a look for the Active Tool Height and see if that fixes my problem.

17

Mach4 General Discussion / Help with first cut please

« on: July 27, 2017, 05:20:21 PM »

I've just got Mach4 up and running on my router and tried to run a file with limited success.

I've indicated off the material and zero'd out the DRO inputs just as I do all the time in Mach3.

Loaded the file and pressed Cycle Start. The result is that the spindle moves up to what might be a safte hight. Pretty much at the top of it's travel and then proceeds to cut air.

I load the exact same file into Mach3 and it cut's the part just as expected. I'm pretty sure it's just something simple that I'm not seeing or aware of.

Here is the start of the code. Any hints on what I'm missing?

G90 G94 G91.1 G40 G49 G17
G21
G28 G91 Z0.
G90

(2D CONTOUR4)
M5
M9
T2
S20000 M3
G54
M9
G0 X464.338 Y-25.245
G43 Z15. H2
Z5.
G1 Z1. F500.
Z-0.8
X464.331 Y-25.244 Z-0.852
X464.311 Y-25.241 Z-0.9
X464.28 Y-25.236 Z-0.941
X464.239 Y-25.23 Z-0.973
X464.191 Y-25.222 Z-0.993
X464.14 Y-25.214 Z-1.
X463.943 Y-25.182

18

General Mach Discussion / Re: C11 and ESS Spindle/VFD setup

« on: December 04, 2015, 03:02:30 PM »

No. It's still not sorted out.

Right now I'm just using the pot on the VFD to change the speeds. It's getting the job done, but I not ideal.

19

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: New people welcome !! Come in here and introduce your self!

« on: October 21, 2015, 02:42:54 AM »

G'day everyone.

I've just joined up here and been reading through lots of posts.

I'm in the finishing stages of building a medium size 3 axis router with just a few tweaks to go with the Mach3 software I switched to after the last control boards and software I found totally lacking.

I live in Cairns Australia and build custom ukuleles and parlour guitars from my workshop just a couple of meters from my back door.

20

General Mach Discussion / C11 and ESS Spindle/VFD setup

« on: October 21, 2015, 01:02:36 AM »

Hello everyone. My first post here, as I've just swapped to a C11 board with the ESS running Mach3.

The spindle now starts and stops via software commands, and the next step is to get software to control the spindle speed. Right now I'm using the pot to change the speed. I've got a pretty good idea of what the VFD parameters will need to be set to, but the proof will be in the pudding once the wiring and config are set.

I have a Chinese 2.2kw ATC spindle with the Sunfar E300 VFD.

The config screens with Mach3 are a bit confusing, as is the wiring up of these items. Every example that I've found isn't for the setup that I have.

Can anyone give me a walk through of the set up for the required parts please.