Greeting my fellow CNC enthusiasts. This is my first post here. I've been doing woodworking and hand carving for over 35 years. I am an IT professional by trade. My best friend bought a Rockler CNC Shark over 2 years ago and was totally confused. I was able to get it running in not time flat and fell in love with it. Probem was he was over an hour drive away.
I just purchased a Chinese 3040T 4 axis (couldn't afford anything else) on eBay. Read lots of reviews and it did not seem to be complicated with my previous experience. It arrived with a broken parallel port. I was able to get a new adapter and solder it in place. No biggy being an IT guy. The machine moves correctly in all axis using the keyboard. I did a motor tuning to calibrate distance and that is when I realized something was seriously wrong.
For the last two weeks I have spent countless hours reading the entire Mach3 manual 3 times and looking in this and other forums. I've read every post on the net and downloaded every manual related to all 3040 models. Even google translated some in the hopes I could get the correct setting. Nothing seemed to work. First problem is that no two manuals have the same Steps/Velocity/Acceleration and no manual has Step Pulse or Dir Pulse listed even if the machine and control are exactly the same. The reason I am very concerned is every manual is showing "Steps per" field in the 400 range, but after I calibrate in Settings (Alt+F6) then Steps per unit to it resets it to the 10,000 range. The numbers work for the x and Y axis and is accurate to less than a 1/16 of an inch when moving 5 inches. The Z axis I can't get correct no matter how many times I try. The motors are not making noise and movement is smooth on X and Y. I am concerned that the numbers are so exponentially far off from what the manual states that it just shouldn't be right. As for the Z axis I can't get it to go down to the wood so it carves into the wood unless I stop it mid-cycle, move it with the keyboard and start the G code again.
Any suggestions or assistance is most welcome.
In Kindness,
Robert