Hi All
I am working on a quilting machine design. I just set up a breadboard system using MACH3 Smooth Stepper and a Homann designs MB02 Break out board. Running on a fresh 7 windows install to a clean hard disk.
I am using Brushed DC servos and Leadshine DCS 810 drives. Brushed is still a fair bit less expensive than AC brushless.
Its all up and running on the desk beside me.
To make a test pattern I used AutoCAD to draw a simple Diamond design, having done thousands of them in the past a few minutes work. There are only 2 polylines used The central pattern and the border. In the past I used a post processor Written in VB to generate machine code for a proprietary Italian Resta Machine (Not Gcode). This post processor was set up to "follow" polylines, only stopping at the beginning and end. In AutoCAD a polyline can have many segments compared to a line in AutoCAD that is a single object. (Polylines can include arcs).
Using polylines gives good control of the machine, For this test only two; and the starts and ends are all near zero. The pattern design does close the start and ends touch however they are not joined.
So what to use as a post processor? I tried the Lazycam beta program available when you install Mach, It worked!
But don't get excited yet, While it flawlessly converted the DXF file from AutoCAD (Saved as version 12) and ran on the test bed strange things happened.... The zero point was moved to the right hand side of the of the design and it started there, and it did not start at the beginning of the polylines it reordered the segments.
I am not familiar with LazyCam, there may be settings to correct the above inconsistencies. If anyone is more familiar with it can offer a suggestion I would appreciate it.
However settings or not it does the job and would machine the correct pattern. There will just be more jumps than needed. Note the pattern is 3365 mm wide by 3810 mm High. Jumps matter!
The final test will be to understand How accurate the constant velocity setting is in Mach ? from what I have read this is the best currently available option?
There is mention of the requirement in the Mach Laser setting?
As has been discussed a lot in this forum (Run a search on Quilting) It is very important the stitch length is maintained at all times irrespective of the feed.
In a perfect world one of the spare axis could be set to this mode.
Thinking on it there are many applications where some sort of work head speed has to be accurately correlated with the feed vector.
Applying Paint, Glue or other materials
Laser or flame cutting.
Sewing
Sign writing
There must be more
Regards
John
I tried to upload he image below to the page as an IMG but it did not work
Hyperlink worked...
http://www.mediafire.com/view/nil9a4j1ao22319/Quilt.jpghttp://www.mediafire.com/download/9vs61pvj21i8f3c/quilt_test_A.dxf