Third party software and hardware support forums. > Newfangled Solutions Mach3 Wizards
tiling - X only very long piece
gmankev:
I believe tiling is not supported in MACH.
I have thought about a workaround, but dont know if the basis of the idea is possible.
Is it possible to tell MACH that its at a particular very long measurement greater than its machine table. MACH would then work there in a relative manner.
Is there any way for the user to input a measurement which will tell MACH3 that when I do ref all home its actually at 2400 mm and next time its ref all home its 4800 mm.
joeaverage:
Hi,
--- Quote ---Is there any way for the user to input a measurement which will tell MACH3 that when I do ref all home its actually at 2400 mm and next time its ref all home its 4800 mm.
--- End quote ---
Would you expand on this. A home location is just that a home location and is the same time after time, it does not change.
Are you suggesting that you have different home locations dependent on the size of material?
Craig
gmankev:
Thanks for responding - yes sort I want to mark 'soft' home positions at different spaces along a very large piece .
My pieces are long 6mtrs and I move them through the CNC frame along the X axis and clamp them exactly before continuing with the next gcode file. It works well but we do a lot of a manual marking and measurements.. I would rather that our post processor and MACH3 know we have a virtual area of (X * Y ) 6000 x1200 .. When we move the workpiece linearly 1000 mm, we would confirm measurement (manually, laser, etc., - maybe its 1005 mm) and then enter the new offset 1005mm .. MACH3 would then work on the rest of the file from there and update all its X measurements based on the entered offset..
Then MACH3 would display the new offset and move the tool relative from there.
My post processor needs some work to generate toolpaths in 1000mm sections all in one file., instead of the current method of 6 files of 1000mm
The actual accuracy of my measurement between linear X moves is OK and enough for what I need.
joeaverage:
Hi,
OK that sounds pretty reasonable.
I don't think that 'ref all' or some modification of it is going to work. When Mach 'homes' it goes to a particular location and calls that location 0,0,0 Thereafter
all moves and coordinates are relative to that location. That's good for Mach, it knows where it is in relation to the boundaries of the machine but not very
convenient for you and I.
You may have noticed that Mach has a number of Work Offsets. This allows you to manually jog to a location on the material and say this is the orgin of my part.
Thereafter the Gcode will move about that Work zero. If a bit later you wish to shift the cut zone you can do so by calling another work zero. Mach has six work
offsets without a P numbering scheme and up to 256 with such a scheme, plenty enough.
The process would be cut in one area until the parts are all done THEN call G54.1 and run the same file and all the same parts will be cut but displaced from your
original cuts. Would that suffice?
Another possibility is that Mach4 has the concept of a 'head'. Each head is a cutting tool (plasma or spindle or grind head etc) and separated by a head offset.
I've never had call to use it but you could download Mach4 and run the Sim(ulator) plugin for as long as you like to experiment with it.
Craig
gmankev:
The use of work offsets will be useful. I also see there are other ways to accomplish this and I am just working through all the bad ones now!
Thanks for detailed description of the MACH domain, that tallies with my understanding, but it took some reading to realize why this is so, machine stability and knowing its HOME is critical, it would not be good to be typing that in manually as I suggest. My method of recording the feed length could be better - some connection to read the value direct from lenght encoder and feed that to the a MACRO which would modify the value of work offset after I move my work piece and need to adjust the relative offset slightly .
In my post processor I will continue with producing files per 1000mm movement section.
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