Messages

11

General Mach Discussion / Re: Need help/advice

« on: November 08, 2017, 11:54:11 AM »

Hi Tweakie.CNC,

Thanks for the quick response, i'll keep that in mind.
And thanks for your patience and time, one more question;
what would be the best learning source for mach3 and CNC in general?
I feel like im going to end up pestering forums while i learn and i don't want to be a burden

thanks,
Alex

12

General Mach Discussion / Re: Need help/advice

« on: November 08, 2017, 11:35:42 AM »

Hi again,

I didn't know whether to make a different post or just post here, but i'll just post this here.

I did the driver test on my PC and its not a flat line but its not dropping below excellent, i'll attach an image to make it clearer.
i've read somewhere that changing the pc drivers from ACPI to Standard PC help improve the frequency but i have no idea how to change it on windows 7,
i've tried doing it the windows XP way but i can't see the Standard PC driver in the list.

Many thanks,
Alex

13

General Mach Discussion / Re: Need help/advice

« on: November 08, 2017, 03:27:09 AM »

Thanks for the tips Tweakie.CNC and RICH, i'll try out the older version today. And i'll go over the calibration again.

Alex

14

General Mach Discussion / Need help/advice

« on: November 06, 2017, 12:39:02 PM »

Hi,

I've been having some calibration issues with my mach3 mill. I've set my steps using the step calibration feature and got that right but i went into the MDI panel to double check, triple check... I've been checking each axis numerous times to make sure its right.

for example i put in x1 and it moves exactly 1mm, then I'll move another 1mm - x2 and it will be out by .002mm and then another 1mm and it'll be bang on 1mm again.
i can deal with it being .002mm out but thats small movements (same as what i put above applies to movements of .1mm to 1mm)

I'll then do 2mm increments and it'll be bang on 1st time then .004 then .09 then bang on. the most its gone out is 0.1mm.

the machine will cut good circles and squares, apart from a very slight notch in corners for the circles.

If i run a long program, one being 3hours long for a small block it will cut perfectly for the roughing cuts to get the base shape, that being 1 hour and then the other 2hours being finishing, it will dive into the piece on the last 10,000 ish lines of code, right at the end . I know its not the code that's at fault because it never faults at the same line and i've had a few pieces finish without killing the material.


I'm still new to CNC and everything i know is from playing around, forum reading and youtube videos.
Im using Fusion 360 to design pieces and post to g-code and then use brackets to make small changes to the code.
The machine is a Bridgeport mill thats been converted to CNC with 3 nema-23 motors
The computer that is running it is a dell optiplex 780 series with a dual core CPU 2.93 GHz, 4GB RAM, An Nvidia GT 610 GPU 2GB DDR3 memory and its running Windows 7 Professional 32-Bit with some windows features disabled, such as mouse cursor shadows and unnecessary animations like window minimisation.
the version of mach3 is; R3.043.066

Many thanks,
Alex


(ps. the squares and circles as mentioned before are cut to the size specified and the right depth)

15

FAQs / New to CNC need help please

« on: July 07, 2017, 09:36:40 AM »

Hi,
I'm very new to CNC and could do with some help please 
I've recently upgraded the mill I use to 3-axis CNC and I've no idea where I'm going wrong. 
I've gone into the automatic step calibration and used a DTI to see how many steps the motors need and that's giving me continuous results, if I tell it to move 0.1mm in the calibration it will move that far, I've set the backlash by moving in one direction by 1mm measuring on a DTI and then moving back the other way to see how far off the backlash is and setting that it works.
I've turned the velocity and acceleration of the motors down and played with the debounce interval setting but every time I jog an axis and press return to zero or run a g-code it just isn't having it. It seems to move further and further from the start point the more I move it.
Its all getting confusing and its getting to that point where if I keep trying I'll eventually put it far out of where I want it to be.

-Alex

(using version; R3.043.066 on Windows XP Professional)