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Author Topic: Setup help needed  (Read 4125 times)

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Setup help needed
« on: June 30, 2012, 09:03:02 AM »
Hi all, I am in the process of building my own little cnc machine and have just got to fitting the motors to X & Y but have become a litlle confused with the motor setup.
I am using Nema23 motors that have a 1.8 degrees per step and the screws fitted to the X & Y are 14mm 3D (3mm per turn). The stepper driver board has five microstep settings which are 1, 1/2, 1/4, 1/8, 1/16 and is currently set at 1/8. I have tried to get the setting for the mach3 motor settings from the calculations but when i try to engrave some letters they are not the correct size where am i going wrong. I have used 1/3= .3333r and steps per rev = 200 x 8 = 1600 then 1600 x .3333 = 533.28 this is the number i have entered into the steps per rev is it correct ?

Offline Graham Waterworth

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Re: Setup help needed
« Reply #1 on: June 30, 2012, 09:11:08 AM »
When you say the size is wrong, by how much is it wrong? if its a small amount this could be why.

I get the calculation 1600*.33333333 as 533.33328


« Last Edit: June 30, 2012, 09:15:27 AM by Graham Waterworth »
Without engineers the world stops
Re: Setup help needed
« Reply #2 on: June 30, 2012, 11:01:29 AM »
The difference between the cad drawing and the engraved part was big. I made a drawing in bobcad and sent the toolpath to mach3, the drawing was a simple 30mm square. The square drawn by mach3 was approximately 75mm square, i just tried setting the steps automatically in mach3 by using move axis 20mm and measuring the result (50mm) ithen gave me the correct steps and seems to have fixed the error so i will try a few more simple shapes to see what happens.

Offline Hood

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Re: Setup help needed
« Reply #3 on: June 30, 2012, 12:13:09 PM »
Try some of the wizards as it sounds like BobCADs code may be the problem.
Hood
Re: Setup help needed
« Reply #4 on: July 01, 2012, 02:51:09 AM »
Thanks for the suggestion Hood, checked out the Bobcad configuration and found that the post processor i was using must have been a imperial version. downloaded the metric version rev 2 from their site and the cad compared to actual engraving is now correct enough to make some final tweaks to the steps per rev setting. Now i have the X & Y complete i can continue with the building of my Z axis so i can eventually start some practice/test pieces, looking forward to it !!
Re: Setup help needed
« Reply #5 on: July 05, 2012, 09:03:36 AM »
Well just as i thought everything was sorted i hit another problem. As i said in previous post i found that the post processor was wrong and the engrave function worked fine and completed the job after changing it. I have just tried to do a v-carve with the same processor and find i have the same problem again although engrave still works. When trying to do a v-carve the operation halts before the job is complete. I am using the 3 axis v-carve function in bobcad but have also tried the vcarve pro program which is using a different post processor and will not work in engrave or vcarve. Am i missing something here being a total newbie to this some help and suggestions would be appreciated.

Offline Hood

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Re: Setup help needed
« Reply #6 on: July 05, 2012, 10:51:35 AM »
Do you have a licence for Mach? If not then it could be you are hitting the 500 line limit.
Hood
Re: Setup help needed
« Reply #7 on: July 05, 2012, 12:19:21 PM »
Yep just checked and the version i am running is indeed a demo version so just connected to a old pc that still has the old licenced version installed and it does complete job now from all programs, looks like i better start saving again if i want to use the current version which is better than the old one.

Offline Hood

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Re: Setup help needed
« Reply #8 on: July 05, 2012, 01:09:57 PM »
No need to save as long as your licence is a legitimate one and not a pirate. You can update as much as you like on the same licence :)
Things may change a bit when Rev4 of Mach comes out but that wont be for a while.
So just go to your old computer and copy over the Mach1lic.dat file and you will be fine :)
Hood