Messages

21

General Mach Discussion / Re: How do I reverse the x-axis direction of travel?

« on: July 19, 2006, 04:57:27 PM »

No - unfortunately the limit switch only activates when the y axis moves to the extreme upper end of the travel. Limit switch is attached to the machine frame rather than the moving spindle assembly. I should ask K2 about this... I'm sure there's a work-around

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General Mach Discussion / Re: How do I reverse the x-axis direction of travel?

« on: July 19, 2006, 04:45:00 PM »

Does that not require that I move the limit switch to the nearside of the y-axis table travel?

23

General Mach Discussion / Re: How do I reverse the x-axis direction of travel?

« on: July 19, 2006, 04:32:24 PM »

When I watch the Mach3 videos it is apparent that when the demo machine is referenced to home, it shows that to be in the lower left corner of the table area.

My limit switches put my machine home at the top left of the table area. Consequently when I load the roadrunner program and jog my table somewhere in the middle of the table area to set a x and y zero starting point, the display shows my location (the brown crosshairs on the display) BELOW my table work area (the red rectangle).

Since my home position has to be top left, how do I compensate for this coordinate difference?

24

General Mach Discussion / Re: How do I reverse the x-axis direction of travel?

« on: July 19, 2006, 03:28:25 PM »

OH - ok, if Y+ is away from me then I am in good shape. Let me check soft limits and make sure they're OK.
Boy this has been a great learning experience. All newbies like me should read this thread!!

25

General Mach Discussion / Re: How do I reverse the x-axis direction of travel?

« on: July 19, 2006, 02:53:58 PM »

So far so good - I set up the soft limits although it's hard to see if anything as been affected. Got the motors calibrated through set steps. That seems to be OK.

The only thing that remains unresolved is that, no matter what I check and un check in config/homing, my Y axis reads + goiing toward home and minus moving away from home. If I change checkboxes, I can reverse the +/- readout on the DRO but it thinks the limit switch is at the other (far) end and tries to go home at the wrong end. After trying endless combinations of checkboxes it's either on or the other :-(

26

General Mach Discussion / Re: How do I reverse the x-axis direction of travel?

« on: July 19, 2006, 01:03:02 PM »

afn09556 and Hood - Many thanks .... enabling the Home Neg for the x-axis worked fine. Now all 3 axes know where home is and roll onto and back off the limit switches as they should when I hit "Ref All Home"..

I admit I don't know how to set up soft limits. What do they do?

Also - my DROs are reading much faster than the actual table travel. By eye - it looks like the DROs are registering one inch for each turn of the leadscrews. How to I calibrate that?

27

General Mach Discussion / Re: How do I reverse the x-axis direction of travel?

« on: July 18, 2006, 10:24:05 PM »

Hood - great solution! Based on your .gif above I updated my settings. I was able to manually trip each limit switch by hand and got the expected lit up led's to confirm. Reset to continue, then I jogged each axis onto its limit switch and everything worked!! Hit the override and jogged off. Then tried hitting the Ref All Home button. The Z and Y axis referenced themselves correctly off the limit switches but the x-axis took off at a leisurely pace away from the limit switch towards the opposite end of the table. Obviously this has something to do with me reversing the x-axis direction.

Any thoughts on that?

28

General Mach Discussion / Re: How do I reverse the x-axis direction of travel?

« on: July 18, 2006, 09:58:36 PM »

That's very helpful Hood - I will apply that to my settings and see what happens. I was trying to figure out those settings earlier this afternoon. Thanks for taking the time to dig through that xml. Will advise on my success/failure...

29

General Mach Discussion / Re: How do I reverse the x-axis direction of travel?

« on: July 18, 2006, 03:07:10 PM »

My setup is a K2 KG3925 CNC Router that I bought used with very low mileage. Everything is stock except that I have ABBA heavy duty ballscrews on the machine (there's a photo of it earlier in this thread) Motors appear to be Made by DGM. Not sure who made the limit swiches..

When not being jogged, the servos make a very feint creaking sound about every 2 seconds. I heard there's a setting in Mach3 whene you can limit power to the motors when not in use.

30

General Mach Discussion / Re: How do I reverse the x-axis direction of travel?

« on: July 18, 2006, 02:40:13 PM »

Thanks Hood, I'll let the wee quinie know you said that!
Unfortunately I didn't get that far in Mach2. I'll monkey around with the limit switches today.

An interesting note: After reversing the direction of travel I went into Motor Tuning and set up all three axes to run nice and smooth at 300 ipm. When I saved the settings and tried the machine again the x-axis direction had reset itself to the original backwards direction and I had to go in and recheck that box again.

Time to watch the setup vidoes again I think!