Messages

31

General Mach Discussion / Loosing X,Y position location

« on: January 23, 2012, 01:48:04 PM »

Hello,

I manage a student fabrication shop at Hampshire College and four or five years ago a student converted one of our manual Bridgeports to CNC run with Mach3.  I have no prior experience with CNC and haven't been able to dedicate much time to working with this one, but I'm trying.  The student did an impressive job considering he had no prior experience with this sort of thing and was completely self guided.  Not everything worked out quite right including being able to have MPG control on only one axis at a time, and, of greater significance, he was never able to get the positional feedback system (whatever that's called) working.  Fixing that is more than I can probably take on at this point but I can't ignore a new problem we're having.

For a while now if I rapid in both axes simultaneously one of them will unpredictably stall and won't more again until I stop moving the other axis (and of course it loses its position).  I have not had this happen when I am feeding a lower rates.  Recently, after zeroing on a part and starting to run code the machine would go to the wrong Y starting operation position, and (after stopping the code) when I hit "Go to Z" it would go to a position offset from the part origin.  Sometimes it would do the same thing (to the same position) on repeated attempts and sometimes it would offset by even greater amounts.  This primarily happened on the Y but then started happening on the X as well.  Now, it makes sense that this might happen like it does on the manual rapiding since it is rapiding in two directions at once, but the odd thing is that it hasn't happened (except for possibly once) while in the middle of running code (even though it rapids multi-axis for tool changes and such).  Also,  when it happens during manual rapiding you can hear the motor complaining as long as you're holding the jog.  I don't ever hear this while running code.

I may be leaving out some relevant details, but does anyone have any suggestions about where this problem is coming from?

Thanks,

Glenn
http://lemelson.hampshire.edu/
http://www.hampshire.edu/academics/index_lemelson.htm

32

G-Code, CAD, and CAM discussions / Re: G-code note displaying correctly

« on: March 22, 2010, 09:34:31 AM »

We had the licensed version installed but had to reinstall the program on a new computer.  During the installation I don't recall there being anything about it being a demo version.  How can I know if it is?

Glenn

33

G-Code, CAD, and CAM discussions / G-code note displaying correctly

« on: March 19, 2010, 11:51:38 AM »

I am trying to run a g-code created in CamWorks.  It runs fine for the first 11 feature operations then it hits line "N501 M03" and stops all movement and the spindle.  Now the weirdness starts.  The remaining lines of code (to line 672) all display as "N501 M03".  Though the line number in the code displayed window doesn't change, as I scroll down the lines, the line number in the line number box does change.  When I click the "edit g-code" button the code displays in its entirety all the way to line 673 (also M30) with no apparent irregularities (to my untrained eye).  An additional curiosity– after loading the g-code but before running it, I can scroll down to line 501 then it won't allow me to go any further and the display follows that line with lines 498 through 501 repeating.

Tell me this is some simple bug to fix, please.

Glenn

34

General Mach Discussion / Re: please help Mach3 and Lazycam

« on: March 16, 2010, 05:39:59 PM »

I'm having a similar sounding problem even when I'm doing a manual continuous jog (though I haven't switched motor position to confirm that it isn't the motor), but I don't get any error message it just looses its position.

Anybody with any ideas?

Glenn

35

General Mach Discussion / Re: Really basic spindle question

« on: November 13, 2007, 06:42:52 PM »

Unfortunately, I don't know enough to reliably answer your question, but I do believe it is run on relays.  Here's the whole story if you care to hear it.  I run a fabrication and design facility for students at a small liberal arts college.  About two years ago, a very bright (if overconfident) student converted one of our Bridgeports to CNC using the Mach3 software.  We (especially I) haven't used it enough to get much familiarity yet, and the whole system has been, let's say, tempermental.  Unfortunately, this student hasn't been around a lot to debug things and I'm trying to step into the void, especially because pretty soon he's going to be gone for good.  Thanks for attempting to help.  Hopefully, I'll get to the point where I know enought to know what questions to ask.

36

General Mach Discussion / Really basic spindle question

« on: November 09, 2007, 01:18:42 PM »

When I click on the Spindle button, its border flashes yellow, as does the Dwell button (for the appropriate amount of time), but no movement on the spindle.  Does the flashing happen during normal operation or is this an error sign?  If it's an error, any ideas for a cause?  This machine has run properly in the past (with intermittant problems).  The software was recently updated due to another problem which is resolved, but the spindle has behaved this way since the new software installation, which was reinstalled a second time, in case that was the problem, to no avail.