Messages

61

Show"N"Tell ( Your Machines) / Re: Refitting Mini Mill

« on: July 25, 2006, 03:31:41 PM »

I highly recommend the Ron Steel conversion. 200oz motors will do all the mill is capable of.

http://www.stirlingsteele.com/millplans.html

Here an older pic of mine, hasn't changed much since this was taken. I has Ron's belt drive kit, Driven by a Hobbycnc board, was running it with Turbocnc but the old laptop died and I've got a replacement that is Mach capable. I've added an auxilary high speed spindle to the side of it as well.




Here's a review I did of his belt drive kit that has a few close up pics of stuff.

http://www.outdoorsunlimited.net/~chucksmy/Mini-Mill/Mini-Mill_Belt_Drive_Upgrade.html

Oh, the backlash comp works fine in Mach, in addition you can tweak your lead screw steps to dial things in. But keep in mind that even though you can compensate for backlash, it doesn't solve the backlash problem. If you are climb milling with a heavy cut, it will want to pull the work for the distance of your backlash. You can run the gibs a little tigher for light cuts and get by. Best thing is to use anti-backlash adjustable ball nuts or at the very least acme lead screw with a home made anti-backlash nut. Roton will custom fit your ball nuts to your ball screws for for the least amount of backlash fwiw, still not as good as anti-backlash nuts.

 

62

General Mach Discussion / Mach2/3 Hardware requirements?

« on: July 23, 2006, 09:22:35 PM »

I'm literally ready to purchase the license tonite but I have a question.

I've been running TurboCNC to this point mainly because I had an old 120mHz Pentium laptop running DOS. it finally died. I'm driving a HobbyCNC controller on a bench mill and it has served me well.

I picked up another laptop with a 400mHz PII, it's an HP Omnibook XE2. I loaded XP SP2 on it and Mach2. I configured Mach2 this weekend, tweaked the backlash settings. I left most of the defaults except for my required port configuration. I've been using it all weekend mainly jogging and MDI entries. I use OneCNC and have posted a few files but they are over the 1000 line limit for the demo. Anyway, everything seems to be working just fine, no apparent missed steps, I tuned the motor settings about %20 below the point where they no longer stalled. There is nothing else installed on the laptop, it's dedicated to this purpose, I sneakernet the files on a memory stick.

Is there any reason that I should be concerned that the laptop I'm using is insufficient for the application? Can I expect Mach3 to perform similarly? I'm happy with Mach2, it  does all that I need it to do, I was wary to try Mach3 in case it might have some instabilities with the hardware, at least until I hear otherwise.  I've got some jobs to run this week and I'm ready to 'Buy Now' Otherwise it's back to Turbocnc.

63

Works in progress / Re: New Screen released ( Beta 1)

« on: April 21, 2006, 12:15:12 PM »

Benny, I'm not running Mach yet but hope to once my replacement computer arrives. I run a 4 axis mill at the moment. I like your screen layout alot esp the configuration of the axis. Here's what I'd like to see for use in a milling application.

Change the Go To Zero button to Go To Position so that the operator can enter a position, whether that be zero or an absolute position. Having an Absolute/Incremental button would be handy so that doing a Go To move could be in relation to Zero or the current position.

On each axis create a means to toggle between Jog Continious/Jog Incremental. I use this all the time when locating an edge, I  jog .001" or .0005" when finding an edge. I also like to have a fast & slow continous jog.

Replace the jog '+' & '-' buttons with directional arrows as related to the tool movement. Place the arrows accordingly on the screen eg. <  > for the X axis,  up & down for the Z & Y axis , my little mind while in deep concentration sometimes needs a prompt to remember which direction is the '+' direction.

Create a seperate Home box for "Home X, Y, Z, ALL"  Wtih Home on each Axis control as you have it I'd be crashing Tools like crazy with my clumsy mouse control, I need that stuff away from the regular axis controls, I'm always tweaking movements up, down left, right etc.

Being able to to toggle between the GCode & Graphic screens would be handy while a job is running if the software would support it.

I'm sure I'll have some more input once my computer arrives & I load Mach to give it a try.