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.

Hi,

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.

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

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.

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

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.   

Thhanks for bearing with my questions.

I have figured out a measuring method for my 6M work pieces with a friction wheel and angular encoder.(accuracy aside for the moment).  The quadrature encoding can be connected to WARP9 and should then appear in the Settings Panel in MACH3..

My next questions and steps are  

i) to add this value to main screen for easy monitoring
ii) with respect to the 'To DRO' / 'Load DRO' buttons in that panel.. Does this copy the encoder value to the X position .
iiii) I can write a MACRO to update my CNC file based on this encoder position, perhaps a G54.1  code to to update location based on the error between desired and actual

Then back in CAM I can produce a toolpath in large 1M tiles , update it with suitable macros in preprocessror and send to machine.



 

Hi,
I transitioned to Mach4 about 18 months ago and my Mach3/VB was always weak, in fact it was to get away from VB that I went to Mach4. From what
I remember though there was the opportunity to read a raw encoder value and have another DRO which held the numerically corrected value. The numerically
corrected value could be displayed on screen and/or mixed/manipulated with other DROs.

I think therefore i),ii) and iii) are all achievable although I'm not going to offer to help with VB, if you wished to do it in Lua I would.

Craig

-->i) to add this value to main screen for easy Monitoring
this is pretty easy

-->ii) with respect to the 'To DRO' / 'Load DRO' buttons in that panel.. Does this copy the encoder value to the X position .
that is also easy via VBScript

-->iiii) I can write a MACRO to update my CNC file based on this encoder position, perhaps a G54.1  code to to update location based on the error between desired and actual
-->Then back in CAM I can produce a toolpath in large 1M tiles , update it with suitable macros in preprocessror and send to machine.

here i am not sure, what you trying to modify on the NC files.

let's make an example for better understanding.

you have a 3M part.
is your CAM making three file's. 1st file 0-1000m 2nd file 1000-2000mm 3rd file 2000-3000m ?
if three files are the x-coodrinates going from 0-3000mm or 0-1000mm in each file ?

if the value of your measuring wheel is in Mach3, it should be no bigger Problem to
"modify" x-axis value after a ref according to this value.

TPS WROTE:

>> if the value of your measuring wheel is in Mach3, it should be no bigger Problem to
>> "modify" x-axis value after a ref according to this value.

Thanks you picked up great on what I am trying to do.. and I think you lead me the correct way to do it.

I would really like to get to one file 0_3000mm, and it now sounds like I can use my  measured DRO value to be the real X position.

So at the moment I am trying to figure out if one file for 0_3000mm or  3 files of {0_1000mm,1000_2000mm,2000_3000mm} is better.   

I would prefer to use one large file to cover the complete 3M piece and add it to it suitabe post processing that will trigger the correct mach and user behaviour needed for every 1M tile.

and have a prompt (that I have to do) for MACH to indicate that  "current  '1000mm tile' is finished - please move piece 1000mm in X direction" .Then the user moves the feed 1000mm (or 990 or 1010... approx   ).  The measure wheel updates the DRO and now the measured DRO value is used to indicate where X has now moved and user clicks continue.   

I actually lack a ESS at the moment,  parts due to arrive soon, so


joeaverage WROTE:

>>  transitioned to Mach4 about 18 months ago

An experienced ESS user (not here) recommended I stay with MACH3 - perhaps he is limiting his vuew.  I have a lot more customization to do - so maybe better flexibility with MACH4.

i would prefere to have seperate files, because interrupting a GCode , do something manualy and then restart at
the exact Point is also not easy.

more interesting is to find this "clear" "bordes" of the single segment's

i dont know, what are you doing on this machine, but what would be, if there
is something to do on this part, witch start's f.e. at 965 and Ends at 1150 ?

i think a lot questions will Pop up during this challege.

i can only give you a Hand on VB Scripting side.