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Author Topic: can you move the motors manually  (Read 11629 times)

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Offline josh

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can you move the motors manually
« on: February 20, 2009, 01:04:42 PM »
hello
I dont know if mach  can do this
is there a way you can manually turn the motors by hand when you have the mach turn on.
my motors have double shaft so I have a hand wheel on the other side but once mach is on  my motors are locked
the only way I can turn them is by the keyboard.
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Offline Overloaded

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Re: can you move the motors manually
« Reply #1 on: February 20, 2009, 04:21:16 PM »
Hey Josh,
 Assuming you have stepper motors, the drives may have an INABLE input or jumper.
You might be able to put a toggle switch to ENABLE/DISABLE the drives which would allow them to freewheel while disabled.
JAT,
RC
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Offline Tweakie.CNC

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  • Super Kitty
Re: can you move the motors manually
« Reply #2 on: February 21, 2009, 08:28:06 AM »
Hi Josh,

As RC has said - I have fitted toggle switches to the enable lines of all axes and this is great for manual repositioning.

Tweakie.
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PEACE

Offline HillBilly

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  • 185 185
Re: can you move the motors manually
« Reply #3 on: February 21, 2009, 09:40:18 AM »
One note: Mach will not act like a DRO in this mode unless you have provided some kind of position feedback.

Darek
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BClemens

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Re: can you move the motors manually
« Reply #4 on: February 21, 2009, 11:15:21 AM »
How about an MPG for your manual positioning? The one I set-up will allow you to drill a hole or manually feed a program. The only problem was setting up an additional parallel port - but have worked that out. This CNC4PC MPG works sweet!

(That is, except for a small problem right now with Y axis..... unrelated though... :)

BC
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Offline josh

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  • 101 101
Re: can you move the motors manually
« Reply #5 on: February 21, 2009, 10:49:18 PM »
thanks for the replies I thought it was something simple like a ON ,OFF SWICHT. ITS  like hillbilly said  once I turn my motors off my DRO will not work
I was hoping my DRO will still work.
thanks again
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Offline Tweakie.CNC

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Re: can you move the motors manually
« Reply #6 on: February 22, 2009, 02:32:46 AM »
By way of explanation for what I use the axis disable for :-

I have had occasion to make wooden signs that are longer than my work table and so they have to be routed in stages. When the progress of the work reaches near to the end of the table, I pause Mach, disable the Y Axis, reposition the work and table manually (with the cutter in exactly the same position on the work), re-enable the Y Axis then restart Mach for the next phase. As Mach knows nothing about this repositioning (DROs remain the same), the work progresses as normal. For this to be successful the routing on each part of the job must be complete prior to the move and this sometimes means some GCode editing prior to starting the job. It is perhaps a bit long winded and does require positioning jigs but this method does enable work that is longer than the cutting area to be undertaken.

Tweakie.
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PEACE

Offline jimpinder

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  • 1,232 1,232
  • Wakefield, West Yorks, UK
Re: can you move the motors manually
« Reply #7 on: February 22, 2009, 04:10:02 AM »
All the suggestions are valid, and the reason the DRO's do not work is that there is no feedback from the motors to Mach 3, in fact Mach 3 is not counting where the motors are, but where it THINKS they should be after it has put out a ceratain number of pulses.

I can see that, to set position before commencing a program, it would be useful - and I would move the tool using MDI commands - e.g. G0 X0, flick off the X drive and manually adjust the X axis to the 0 position and turn it back on - thus avoiding the problem with no feed back.

Having said that, if you look at config, you can set up your jogging to make very small corrections, I have mine to do 1,2,3,4,5 then 10.20.30.40 and 50 thousanths of an inch, so can ajust to the nerest thou (Although I am metric now, so convert to mm's). It takes a little bit of setting up, but is very useful.
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Not me driving the engine - I'm better looking.

BClemens

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Re: can you move the motors manually
« Reply #8 on: February 22, 2009, 07:13:32 AM »
Tweakie's method is how a machine shop works to a larger size than the capabilities of a machine. I remember doing that on a mill with a 3 meter long table that we were machining a 5 meter long die for a composite propeller blade. One edge was initially machined true and was used in the second set-up. The programming was for the 'two' parts. That machine is where the desire for an MPG came from for this hobby machine.

Bill C.
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Offline Hood

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  • 25,835 25,835
  • Carnoustie, Scotland
Re: can you move the motors manually
« Reply #9 on: February 22, 2009, 07:21:31 AM »
I do similar to what Tweakie does except I do not manually move the table, I change the offset to suit the second part. I would imagine that would be the norm in Industry as well.

Hood
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