Messages

241

General Mach Discussion / Re: Acceleration problem

« on: September 23, 2006, 03:03:05 AM »

HI, i have a suggestion. I am not sure if it will work but you might want to play with it any way. I also suspect that 8000 mm per is just to fast for the power of your steppers, not a mach problem just a machine limit. 

Go to the settings screen and under angular limit change the angle to say, 30 and enter a speed that works ok like, 3000mm-s.

The way i think this works( art or Brian please correct me)  is when the look ahead sees a direction change coming up it slows down the output to something that your machine can handle based on what you set in the field. So for a corner if your machine chokes at 8000mm per  on a 90' corner than you can tell mach to slow down on any angle >  (whatever you set) and go to a alternate feed rate.

To the best of my experimentation this is how it works.
 My guess it is in the program to compensate for machines that are faster on single axis moves than coordinated moves. ??

Chad

242

Newfangled Solutions Mach3 Wizards / Re: Surfacing wizzard- just not getting it. Brian?

« on: September 19, 2006, 10:01:58 PM »

Yea that would work also, I guess i am just lazy and would like to work in absolute numbers in reference to the stock height. I guess if my final height is 1.85 i would like to be able to enter my final height without doing the math to get there from a arbitrary rough stock height. The other thing is this would eliminate the need to do a manual 'clean up' pass so i would have a place to take a measurement set things then work my way down..   It really isn't a big deal it is working and i am cutting. I am happy about that. I guess i am just looking for a way to make things quicker.


Chad

243

Mach Screens / Re: Screen Size.

« on: September 19, 2006, 08:58:34 PM »

I don't think so. I thnk you are going to have to get out screen 4 and do some tweaking..

Chad

244

Newfangled Solutions Mach3 Wizards / Re: Surfacing wizzard- just not getting it. Brian?

« on: September 19, 2006, 08:45:47 PM »

chuckels: Usually on the top of the part. See the rest of the post it might make more sense as to what I am getting at.

Brian thanks for the reply!

Ok I see what you are getting at. And it makes even more sense for 'your' wizards because you can chain them together, Surface- now at zero - drill , pocket.......

Here is where it is a pain in the butt for me. I am making a part that has six sides to machine. Six different xyz zero places (one on each side- upper right corner) because of this my stock has to be within a tho or two otherwise when I flip it what ever error is in the stock gets doubled and the previous operations don't line up.
I rough my stock to about 2x2x3.5 on the miter box. The box does a pretty good job of getting things close but there is always a little angle to the stock. Now if i measure on a low spot that will affect how much i am taking down, same with a high spot - both a relative number to the tool tip. My logic is, if i use a gauge block and set the tool tip in absolute to the (in this case to the bottom of the vice) I know exactally how high the block is going to be based on the bottom of the vice.
This is where I thought the wizard would allow me to enter stock height of 2" or so. could be a little more could be a little less, doesn't matter because i know that my tool is 2" above the vice. Now i need to take my stock to 1.9435 (what the cam is expecting) so i would enter 2 for the height and 1.970 for the depth. I can now flip the part and i don't have to measure anything. I can go to the surface wizard and and still have 2 for the stock height and enter my final depth of 1.9435 , hit start and Whola' I have the part exact. I only had to set one thing, and that was my absolute height above the bottom of the vice. I can now repeat this for the other sides and still don't have to measure anything if i want to do the 3.5 side i just enter 3.5 in the stock height and go from there. 

I have started doing it this way and is much faster and seems to give 'me' better results. The only problem is I still have to jog to do all the cutting using the jog keys by hand.

Btw i did purchase the wizards yesterday so far pretty cool. you will see the invoice as Richard (my partner).

I have been getting some vb script errors occaisonally and the wizards don't get along with mach blue light screen.

Not that you don't have anything else to do but how hard would it be to get a tweaked version of the surfacing wizard that works like my ass backwards workfllow? 

Thanks,

Chad 



 

245

Mach3 and G-Rex / Re: G100 jog problems-ART

« on: September 19, 2006, 08:09:56 PM »

Aaah the ubiquitous 'next firmware release'. I understand that this is totally out of your,Arts, probably Marris (sp) control but it is becoming a bit tiresome. I also understand that Steve has a real job and this kind of thing takes time but, sheesh. Like you I have ac servos and 100,000 steps per unit, going to lpt port would be a bit poky...

Ah well wadda goin' to do.

Chad


 

246

General Mach Discussion / Re: MAXNC10CL and MACH3 issues

« on: September 19, 2006, 07:54:09 PM »

Couple of things.
Popping breaker: is this in your main breaker panel or is it on the driver box?

If it is on the main panel make sure that it isn't a GFI or short detecting type. These don't respond well to machines. Also find out what else is on that breaker circuit and try to unplug anything not needed while cutting. If at all possible plug in to another wall outlet on another breaker.

As for your computer this could be any number of things. Ram going bad, Power supply going bad, Cpu getting to hot. And just plain Windows xp.

I would recommend that you backup what you need from that machine and do a format and a reinstall of windows xp. I know this sucks but it is sometimes the only to get things working again. Don't forget to back up your mach .XML file. After you have done that load mach before anything else and give it a go (don't do the optimisation yet) . If you are still having problems with constant crashing post back and we will start looking at hardware.

CHad
 

247

General Mach Discussion / Re: A Axis Questions

« on: September 18, 2006, 11:57:30 PM »

Did you go into the settings screen and set your rotation diameter? I seem to remember someone else having this problem. Sorry i haven't built a rotary axis like that.

Chad
?

248

Show"N"Tell ( Your Machines) / Re: Chads new machine

« on: September 18, 2006, 11:51:45 PM »

LOL , Thanks

It has been quite the project. Version one turned out ok. Still only doing 3 axis work. This winter we should be getting into the 5 axis stuff. We are saving money for mastercam . Also this winter I am going to rebuild the gantry and design a new much more rigid c and b head.

Chad

249

General Mach Discussion / Re: Spindle orientation

« on: September 18, 2006, 06:43:34 PM »

HHm that would be some pretty tricky timing. I am not a code guy at all.

Thinking about it I see a couple of possible problems. First you have the delay between energizing the solenoid and  when the spindle stops. probably on the order of 40ms.
Then you would have a problem with different mass in the chuck. Something small will stop faster than a big hunk of steel. So you would have to adjust your macro timing to deal with that. 25 rpm sounds slow but when you are looking at a timing pulse then a prox pulse then trigger a action with a variable inertia -- makes my head spin at about 25 rpm

I don't know might be a fun thing to try.

Just another thought. could you rig up some quick connect / disconnect to the spindle motor?
You could shut down the spindle motor and engage a stepper and just treat it like a c axis ?

I dunno

Chad

250

General Mach Discussion / Re: Spindle orientation

« on: September 18, 2006, 06:27:17 PM »

Sorry, no offence taken. I ment no animosity. guess I should have worded that differently.

Chad