Messages

201

General Mach Discussion / Re: A Long Sad Story

« on: October 10, 2007, 04:55:42 AM »

Bill

0.0625"and 1/16" are the same size. 1 divided by 16 = 0.0625

Steve

202

General Mach Discussion / Re: Parallel Port Setting IN THE BIOS

« on: October 03, 2007, 08:40:00 AM »

Mines just set to the standard BIOS setting, think it's enhanced parallel port (EPP) or something like that.

Also my computer is still running the advanced power managment and works fine, 6 year old pentium 4 with 512mb RAM

Steve

203

General Mach Discussion / Re: A Long Sad Story

« on: October 03, 2007, 08:36:08 AM »

Here's a good link to some free CAD software.

http://www.freebyte.com/cad/cad.htm

Alibre express is very good and it really is free, I found it very easy to learn but you do still need experiance with CAD systems and the basic operations.

Steve

204

General Mach Discussion / Re: A Long Sad Story

« on: September 29, 2007, 02:35:35 PM »

Do you have a basic understanding of the difference between a raster (dots/pixels) file like a jpg and a vector (mathmatical information) file like Illustrator, Corel Draw or a CAD program.

Lazycam (and most other CAM programs) needs vector information to create your gcode.
Also watch the tutorial video's for lazycam on this site, they'll give you a better understanding of what's going on.

Are you using illustrator to convert the jpg to vector?

You do really need to learn to use a vector program, CAD is better as it's designed to create very exact drawings and most CAM programs need endpoints of lines touching or very close, there is usually a tolerance setting to control this.

Get hold of one of the free CAD programs and spend a few days learning it, it'll really be time well spent and the finished results will be much better than a scanned and converted paper drawing.

Don't loose heart, I've been trying to learn to play a guitar for the last 2 years and I'm still rubbish but I keep trying 

Steve

205

General Mach Discussion / Re: CV setting angle

« on: September 27, 2007, 12:27:12 PM »

Ok thanks for the reply.

My mill has oversized stepper motors fitted (I've been told that simular sized steppers could run a bridgeport sized machine and mine is half that size) and I tend to run quite slowly so I may as well turn off the CV over ride then.

206

General Mach Discussion / Re: Using different screen sets

« on: September 26, 2007, 10:30:20 AM »

Hi

Thanks for the reply.

I'll search through the screen sets and try a few.

Steve

207

General Mach Discussion / CV setting angle

« on: September 26, 2007, 09:25:37 AM »

Another question

When you set the CV override angle is the measurment the inside of the angle i.e. 90 degrees for a right angle, so if I want to stop CV mode on any corner tighter than a right angle I set it to 90 or 80 etc.

Also what setting are you all finding gives the best compromise?

Hopefully sometime soon I'll be able to give some useful answers to peoples questions

Thanks
Steve

208

General Mach Discussion / Using different screen sets

« on: September 26, 2007, 09:18:43 AM »

Hi All

Got my last problem sorted with limit switches etc, many thanks to all that helped.

I've what I hope is a simple question.

How do you use the different screen sets that people have created? is it just a simple selection in Mach3 (presume the screen set has to be in the Mach folder) or is there more involved?
Also can you change back to the default set?

I'm just wanting to use a simple 4 axis set without spindle control and just the main buttons on screen, Is there a screen set like this available for Mach3 Mill?

Thanks
Steve

209

General Mach Discussion / Re: Rotary Axis softlimits

« on: August 29, 2007, 05:31:41 AM »

F will remain the same, Feedrate. If you are refering to just A move, it should be in degrees per minute, as Degree = 1 unit.

Doh, I feel really stupid now :-) of coarse it's degrees per min, never even thought about that.

Got it mainly sorted, unticked the first box (something about 360 rollover), ticked the G0 short move and unticked the softlimit box
The first job I'm doing on it is only 20 degrees either side of zero so I'll take the - move past position and then make a + move onto position to take up any backlash.
It's a new table though so there's not much if any.

thanks
Steve

210

General Mach Discussion / Re: Accurate homing

« on: August 24, 2007, 07:20:29 AM »

My CNC is a small industrial unit, most likly used for training originally, it's a Denford Easimill.

I've just recently removed a Ahha system from my cnc and installed new drivers and Mach3, my system was setup with the Estop removing power from the drives and sending a signal to Ahha, so it lost steps anyway. It did remember the dro readings when shutdown but not when it crashed, which it seemed to do any time it got a bit of code it didn't like.
Mach does have a persistant DRO setting so when you shut it down and then restart it it does show the same position but with microstepping drivers you lose position anyway when the power is removed from the drives, not sure how this would work with feedback from encoders but again I'm not sure I'd trust the position.

I use micro switches for Homing and it's repeatable < 0.0005" so I'm happy with that.

So as has been said I think Estop is just that, an emergency! and I would never trust a computer or electronics to control that stop as they may have been the reason for the Estop.

Steve