Messages

1

General Mach Discussion / Re: Convert Mill machine to Plasma and back.

« on: October 09, 2012, 06:04:35 AM »

Guys, Thanks for the help, it's the kind of information I need. I'm looking into it and will probably give it a shot. I'll let you know how it ends up.
Dave

2

General Mach Discussion / Re: Convert Mill machine to Plasma and back.

« on: October 07, 2012, 02:28:28 PM »

rrc1962,

Thanks for the reply. My CNC is a router and I can hit the speeds for the Miller Plasma. I had figured to modify my table so that I can insert a water bed that would be removable without much fuss. I don't know what a divider board is. I was planning on piggy-backing the torch head to my router mount and then to find a way to trigger the plasma on and off through the software. This probably shows my lack of knowledge in this arena, but that's why I'm asking.

Thanks again for the reply
Dave

3

General Mach Discussion / Convert Mill machine to Plasma and back.

« on: October 07, 2012, 07:17:07 AM »

I've spent hours and hours looking for some kind of information on this, but to no avail. So now I'm going to ask.

I have a Milling machine that I built about 6 years ago and have been using with great success since. I do my drawings in Autocad, Cam in BobCad and cut with Mach 3.

I have a Miller Spectrum 125C Plasma cutter that I would like adapt to my table so that I can occasionally do some metal cutting (I'm building an airplane).

I've picked up bits and pieces from the forum about Plasma but basically I know nothing about setting it up.

The question is...Where can I find the Newbie info about how to set up the plasma for CNC..... Book? Forum? Person? Religion? Cult? Someones Wife?  Heck I'll take anything at this point.

Thanks for any help.

Dave

4

General Mach Discussion / Re: another e stop question

« on: October 04, 2012, 04:13:53 PM »

Hood, or anyone else who might know. I'd like to be able to switch my machine from wood to Plasma and back. Where would be a good place to learn what I need to do? I know nothing about how to set up plasma

5

General Mach Discussion / Re: another e stop question

« on: October 04, 2012, 12:59:27 PM »

Hood,
You're a genius, your last question got me thinking. I couldn't disable the E stop in Mach, so what I did was assign it to an unused pin (11) and set it to active low. Now everything works exactly like it's supposed to. Thanks everyone for your responses.
Hood, Thanks for you help, and for asking the right question.
Dave

6

General Mach Discussion / Re: another e stop question

« on: October 04, 2012, 05:47:40 AM »

Everything is set to pin 10

7

General Mach Discussion / Re: another e stop question

« on: October 03, 2012, 03:20:32 PM »

I guess I worded that wrong in my first post. I have a switch set up at both ends of each axis. These also act as my home switches. There is also a button wired in the same series that I call my E stop button. It is all one circuit. If I set pin 10 in Mach 3 to "active low" the "reset" button won't work. If I set it to active High the reset button and the limit switches work but the problem is - if a limit switch is activated I can't use "limit overide" to move the machine off the switch.

Thanks for the response.
Dave

8

General Mach Discussion / another e stop question

« on: October 02, 2012, 05:19:15 PM »

I have my E stop set up so that my switches are wired in series and attached to Gnd and pin 10. I'm pulling 5 volts through a 10k resistor to pin 10 on a Xylotec board. If I set pin 10 in Mach 3 to "active low" the "reset" button won't work. If I set it to active High the reset button and the limit switches work but the problem is - if a limit switch is activated I can't use "limit overide" to move the machine off the switch. It would seem that they should be set to active low so that when the voltage is interrupted they should go active and I should be able to reset them. Any ideas.

Thanks in advance for any imput you may have.
Dave

9

FAQs / Re: Mach not communicating with machine

« on: September 05, 2012, 02:15:05 PM »

I found the problem with communication. I had the wrong port address in the ports and pins. I'm still having the problem with the E-stop. I can only get it to reset if I run "Active Low" and then my physical e-stops don't function.
Dave

10

FAQs / Mach not communicating with machine

« on: September 05, 2012, 12:08:26 PM »

I've found several posts on this subject and read them but haven't been able to come up with an answer, all help would be appreciated.
I replaced my computer on my machine. It has a pci card for the parallel port. I've transferred the .xml files and screensets and I now have two issues (probably related to the same problem). The biggest issue is that Mach will not communicate with the machine. The second issue is that I can't reset the emergency stop unless I change it's setting to "Active Low". The only difference I've been able to come up with is that the old computer has LPT1 as the com port and the new computer has LPT3. I've changed the port number in the general config from 1 to 3 and left all other settings as the are on the old computer. If I put the old computer back on the machine everything works fine. The new computer gets no response. Any suggestions?
Thanks,
Dave