HI all,

I read almost every email on both this and the yahoo forum every day. I see lots of the same noob questions pop up frequently. 99% of these are explained in the manual , wiki's  and other posts.
This got me thinking why the basics aren't coming across to the 'total new user'. Then it dawned on me, laziness and intimidation.

First laziness:
I have a feeling that people have a shiny new toy and just want to jump in with both feat and start making things happen and can't be bothered with the minucia of reading the manuals, searching the wiki's, searching posts. People just want it to work, and right now. And just to set the record straight, I was, and still am 100% the exact same way, I much prefer to just load and go, figure it out along the way. I think most techie / tinkerer ( <--i don't think that is a word ) types are the same way .

Intimidation:
When I first installed mach and the screen popped up with the blinking e-stop button I was like " Holy crap what the hell is all of this !?! And it just got worse flipping to the mdi, and other screens. At this point I know what most of the stuff is for, and as my machine design advances so does my understanding of the mystery buttons and functions.
I can easily understand (and relate) to the shock and awe of the total new user. 

Given this maybe we should alter our approach to the 'subsonic' new user. Compounding the problem is the fact there are new people with widely varying levels of experience. Some just get it, and well some, um, just don't.  This isn't a bad thing, it just is what it is. Some times people just get out of their tech comfort zone, and get frustrated, and need some help to get past the first hurdle (e-stop).

OK, so here is my idea. What if all of us 'experts' ( In my case I use the term VERY loosely) Get together and compile a 3 or 4 page Quick Start Guide to mach3? It could cover things like:

*Ports and pins, step and dir output for newbies
*Motor tuning 101
*Blinking,Blink, *^@& ,e-stop-stop, blink!
*Backlash makes my machine do goofy things with steppers (that one would have saved me a week)
*I am using chain-link fence wire for the conductors to my home and limit switches and my machine stops sometimes during a cut,no,like really! I was just sitting there and it stopped!
*The de-bounce blues.
*I am trying to run mach on my IMSI 8080 and it ain't working too good.
*I got a usb to mach-port parallel thingies = no bueno.
*I keep changing the motor tuning stuff and it is always the same when i go back, wazzup with that !?!
*up,down,over,under,left,right,north,south,east,west,+,- what way is plus again?
*IJ wasn't he that guy who was driving around in big cicrles in the white bronco? (obscure ref)
*My screen is too big, My screen is too small, My screen is chopping off stuff.
*I got a licence file and art told me so shove it somewhere, but i don't know where.
*eXtensible Markup Language?
*I am using the freebie version and my 55k g-code file won't run, program must be broke.

I am sure there are others. The idea is just a quick and dirty simple guide to get past a lot of the initial noob gotchas.
For in depth details on any of the above we can point them to the excellent manual, awesome videos, great wikis and knowledgeable folk on the helpful forums.

At this point in my mach experience, ~1 year I have learned tons and still have lots to learn and have zero problem helping others if I have an answer. If you print out the mach manual it is over 1/2 inch that's 12.7 mm for those who understand such things, that is a lot to absorb for a noob just trying to get the motors to spin. 

Well enough of my ramblings, what do 'yall think?

Chad
 

That is a good idea

Hello

Have you made one

Marcel

HOW about creating a place here on the mach site called

NEWBEE's CORNER

THen some sticky subjects could cover the basics and from the general in/out compile a newbee manual.

Then you can use THAT spot to direct all newbie type questions to. Then all the old newbies can help the new newbees as they learn to be old newbees.

MAYE your idea was better LOL (;-) TP

Chad,
I hear ya, understand, and basically think it is a good idea. It's also a challenge!

The problem is that CNC covers so many aspects of different disciplines.
What level do you atempt to convey the information?
In a heart beat, you can go from  conveying a simple concept, which can be readable and grasped
to detail that a book can be written on. Each subject is a book.  

How many variations on the theme do you have? Computers, Break out boards, pendants, MPG's, drives, different
motors, wiring, code, etc , etc, etc.........
Then when your all done, you step back, and say, gee's,  I am rewriting the manual., and it's just a different format.

The same goes for software.

Oh BTW, there a quick start guide already written called MACH3 TUTORIAL by Henrik Olssen, about 14 pages long.
Here is the link:
ftp://ftp.machsupport.com/Docs/Mach3%20Setup%20Tutorial.pdf

RICH

I think it would be nice if someone compiled all of the available Mach documentation into one place or one set of links. Information, especially on VB script seems scattered all over so how can one know when and if they have stumbled over all of it?

Many forums have an FAQ sticky  . . . it is always a good idea . . but nu-bees seldom use it . . .  as has been said it is what it is . . .

Personally, I know as a nu-bee, I would have benefited greatly from some published reviews of the bewildering array of products out there. After someone goes thru the pain of getting something sorted out, it really IS a shame that the knowledge get so quickly buried on page two. For example I posted my results with a specific parallel port card. Wouldn't it be better for a nu-bee to read that and get a card that is known to work rather than have everyone guessing how to fix the card he did buy? For my part, I am just finishing going thru several differnet servo drives and to keep the info available to nu-bees (old or new), I put the experiences down in a review/comparison, but there seems no obvious collection point for such things. If there were, I would post it there and also be more inclined to write more reviews as I'm sure others would as well.

It is here if anyone is interested:  
http://www.thecubestudio.com/ServoDriveReview.htm

Hi all, I am a nu-bee and whats probably worse, an older nu-bee, having worked a working lifetime with hand and machine tools in the woodworking industry I decided to build a cnc router as a retirement project,using tips and tricks gleaned from here and there and  I get the basics of G-code functions from books and  forums but I would like to know where I can find diagrams to explain the machine's actions of the more involved code i.e. I J K etc and how to apply them to various axis.  Someone once said that a picture tells a thousand words and I am a great believer in that, I have found a great little app for my smart phone called "Rays CNC codes" and have found it great with its little line drawings explaining in graphic terms how Mach interprets these codes, I would be very interested in a book with this sort of detail in greater detail or even better if your forum could explain them on-line.

papakel,
I would suggest you consider purchasing CNC Programming Handbook by Smid.
It has 540 pages of info that overall covers most aspects of CNC including Gcode.

It does not cover manny of the aspects that were mentioned in reply #4. How could ....it

Now if you want a visual about arcs, try the writeup in Members Docs called ARC Motion. Written for the lathe user but good  grounding when applied to the mill. Play with the files and have some fun.

RICH

..................
Oh BTW, there a quick start guide already written called MACH3 TUTORIAL by Henrik Olssen, about 14 pages long.
Here is the link:
ftp://ftp.machsupport.com/Docs/Mach3%20Setup%20Tutorial.pdf

RICH

Link doesn't work 

Quote from: RICH on July 14, 2009, 08:30:18 AM

..................
Oh BTW, there a quick start guide already written called MACH3 TUTORIAL by Henrik Olssen, about 14 pages long.
Here is the link:
ftp://ftp.machsupport.com/Docs/Mach3%20Setup%20Tutorial.pdf

RICH

Link doesn't work 

It's really still there, it's just when you post a hyperlink here, for some reason the forum always adds the HTTP part.

Copy and paste this text into your address bar in your browser:

ftp://ftp.machsupport.com/Docs/Mach3%20Setup%20Tutorial.pdf

Hope that helps-
Dave