I do big rotary A axis milling jobs in polystyrene, and sometimes want to / have to stop halfway into a job and resume the next day.
I´m trying to use the Run From Here function, to save time, some jobs can take hours… but with disastrous results.
What I do is this (obviously I´m doing something very wrong):
I open the Gcodes for the job that’s half done, I manually advance to the Line number I stopped at, (I have tried to key in the line number, instead of manually scrolling down…but to no effect) , and when I get to the line, in this case 36297, manually, I click on the Run From Here button.
After a brief pause, I get a prompt to Press Cycle Start, I do this, and a “Preparational Move To” window emerges, so far so good.
The data shown in this window is (see pdf):
X 1314.004 (I presume this is because the last X instruction was at line 36203 “G1 X 1314.004”)
Y 3.4879121; (this I don’t understand, as I´m doing rotary milling an Y is stationary at Y=0)
Z 153.83 (this Z height would clear all the geometry without crashing into material)
A -109440. This divided by 360 degrees is 304, the number of revolutions I suppose the A axis has made, so in effect it’s the same as A axis going to Home/0 degrees.
BUT…AND HERES THE PROBLEM…the Z axis, on clicking on OK, dives and crashes into the material, far below the 153.83 value given in the “Preparational Move To” window. Job ruined. I then E Stop, but when I haven’t had time to EStop, once the Z axis gets to (probably) Z = 0 level, it starts to move (probably) to the X axis position indicated…job ruined totally.
This has always happened, in my year or so use of MACH3, to the extent that I´ve avoided using the Run From Here function, but now I´ve some big jobs to do and using it will be inevitable.
What am I doing wrong? By the way, I use DESKPROTO for g-codes, which I´m very happy with.
All help greatly appreciated!
Frank.
The pdf is a screen shot of those Prep Moves over the MACH screen