Does the problem mentioned here  http://groups.yahoo.com/group/mach1mach2cnc/message/138590 apply to the latest Mach post (T_Mach3Rcss.ppr) I've downloaded from the Dolphin site?  I had a weird problem last weekend and am hoping it could be related to the arc polarity or G2/G3 reversal issue mentioned in this message.

I think the PP I use puts out IK's rather than R's,
What problem are you having? Is it internal Arcs that are screwed?
Hood

I think the PP I use puts out IK's rather than R's,
What problem are you having? Is it internal Arcs that are screwed?
Hood

Haven't gotten as far as internal arcs yet.  That pain is coming later.

The part I worked on last weekend had 2 external fillets.  It looked good in the P/M animation and the Mach screen with no crop circles (thanks to your G90.1 tip).  When I ran the code in Mach, cutting air, all was well until it got to one of the fillets and it arced off into oblivion, had to hit the E-stop.  I had already had other self-induced problems and wasted a lot of time on stupid stuff so didn't get much time to look into it before calming libations were necessary.  I'm at work today so will get back to it tomorrow and will have intelligent (I hope) questions to ask.

Like they say, eating an elephant is done one bite at a time.  I'll keep nibbling away at it.

Thats strange, if the toolpath view was ok in Mach then it should really have worked ok.
If you attach your .cnc file tomorrow I will have a look.

Does your PP put out IK's or R's?

Hood

I have strange things happen to me all the time.  It's kharma I guess.

I'll have to watch more carefully on the next attempt as I think the problem started after a tool change.  I may have screwed up something with the tool tip radius or ??.  I guess I posted my question a bit early as I can't respond properly yet to your knowledgeable questions.  Not sure about IK's & R's.

Just look in the code and see if the G2/3's have I and K or an R.
Hood

I have just recently got started with Partmaster and I have discovered that the Mach3 posts do not have any feed rate changes built in to the g-code files.  For example there will be a line that has G00 at the start and some coordinates.  This will send the tool at max rapid speed to that position ok, but the following lines sometimes have NO 'G' at the start, or sometimes they will have G01, or G02/03 but at the end of the block there is NEVER a change in feed rate, so the machine just keeps on at the max feed rate.  Just because there is a G01 at the start of the line, Mach does not know what speed is supposed to be set, so it just stays where it is.  This tiny little issue makes the Mach posts in Partmaster totally useless from what i can see.  I have tried at least 5 different mach posts and they all have the same quirk.  Is there a way around this, is it normal, what do other people do - go in and edit the g-code file every time?  I have complained about this to Dolphin, but their 'post writer' is away.......

I changed my PP quite a bit but I can not remember that being one of the issues, in fact I am quite confident that it wasnt.
If you attach your pp I can have a look at some point, also attach your part file you are having issues with.
Hood

Hood:
I have the guys at Dolphin working on it now for me so that should get resolved in the next few days.  In the mean time it isnt difficult to edit the code file, just a pain in the butt to have to do it.  On the first file I created I ran the code in air to see how it responded.  Everything worked just fine, however there was never any change in feed rate, and on a lathe operation there are several since the machine goes into rapid on the backpath, then slows down for the cutting operation.... that never happened, but it does now that I edited the code file.

I have sent a copy of the edited and unedited code to Dolphin for them to see what is needed and they will be able to fix it for me, but what really amazes me is that no one else seems to have this issue - maybe I am their only customer running Mach?

I had several other issues getting started as well, since they sold me a dual licence for the mill and the lathe, the licence file was never setup properly for lathe work, which is what I really needed.  Initially when I tried to run the post to generate a file - there were NO posts that showed up in the post window, it was blank, although there were posts in the folder.  It turned out that the developers had changed V12 to look for V12 posts and all the posts were V11, that is has now been fixed - 3 weeks later.

After that, when I eventually tried to generate a code file - I got an error and the post processor deleted all but about 9 blocks of code...... thanks very much.  That also got fixed - about a week later, apparently the licence file was never setup to allow me to do lathe work....

So now - almost everything works except the post processor doesn't produce code that works properly......

All in all, I think that Partmaster is a great program for lathe work, very flexible and easy to run - once you understand it, if you don't have all these issues.  That said, Rodney at Dolphin has been great to help me out with good customer service, but it is still annoying since none of these problems should have ever risen had their developers and programmers been on their game.....  based on this experience I don't know if I will ever use the mill program, especially since I have Aspire.  For the price, Aspire is the king of engraving programs IMHO.

I'll let you know if I need any help going forward, thanks for the reply.

Pete

It could well be V12, didnt even know V12 was out. I had V10 and V11 and the feedrate was not an issue.
V11 needed a line at the start of the post to indicate it was  V11 post but as long as that line was there a V10 post would work.
The reason it needed that line was they had fixed a long standing bug with V10 that had reversed arcs for internal work and you had to pick the opposite direction of approach so it would post right. I used my modified V10 post in V11 (with the line added) and it posted perfect code with the tool direction as it should be.

I now use BobCAD and it is a more advanced than Dolphin and I much prefer it but Dolphin does work well.


Hood