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Author Topic: Lateral Movement After Restart.  (Read 749 times)

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Offline pgh3

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Lateral Movement After Restart.
« on: February 27, 2020, 08:11:07 AM »
Good evening all,
I'm talking about a 3040 bench router (from China) that has been working hard and well over the years.
Gecko drivers, Mach3, WindowsXP, VCarvePro CAD, manual spindle motor.
I have noticed that during a cut and I press the space bar, the machine eventually stops in X and Y (after emptying the look-ahead buffer). I then click on the Stop icon in Mach3 and the cutter raises to the Safe Z value I had previously set. All good.
At this point I can turn off the spindle, turn off the drivers to allow the steppers to cool down, or otherwise leave the machine to attend something else without worrying about what is going on while I'm not there.
But when I start up the machine to continue cutting, I would expect the cutter to be lowered back into its previous -Z setting before X and Y movements take place, but no, the X and/or Y steppers move whilst the cutter is being lowered back into the job.
This omits part of the cut so that on the next lap, the cutter has to cut twice the amount of material. This is a bit savage on a 1.5mm end mill in polycarbonate!
I've noticed this tends to occur more on a straight cut on either the X or Y axis, and not on a curve or angled cut line.
Does anyone have any ideas on how to prevent both lateral axes from moving until the previous target -Z value is reached?
Is there a setting within Mach3 that I have overlooked?
Peter

Offline pgh3

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Re: Lateral Movement After Restart.
« Reply #1 on: March 12, 2020, 02:32:07 AM »
After searching elsewhere for answers and getting a response from Newfangled Solutions and watching the video from Peter Passuello, CNC Nutz, I have realized I have been doing it incorrectly.
I want to post here so that anyone seeking an answer can benefit from this issue as I have done.
First, the method of stopping the machine is correct and should be adopted by anyone needing to stop the machine for whatever reason.
Clicking on 'Cycle Start' with a safe Z set at 10mm means the cutter will be descending into the work whilst lateral movement is taking place, causing material to not be cut until the next lap.
Changing the safe Z to 1 or 2 mm will minimize the lateral movement. Still not the best way to restart the machine.
A better way is to note the line number above the 'Run From Here' window, move the line a few lines back and then click on the 'Run From Here' button. A dialogue will appear allowing the operator to confirm all the co-ordinates before proceeding.
If the spindle is under Mach3 control, click the button within this dialogue to turn on the spindle before proceeding. After clicking on 'OK', the running cutter will be moved to the correct position and cutting will continue as before.
Another method is to create a script and add some active buttons to Mach3 screen that will perform all the functions that are required to stop lateral movement, raise the cutter, stop the spindle, and then restore everything back to the correct position once cutting is to resume.
As yet I can't find such a script - hopefully, someone has expended the effort and created one; I would love to hear of this. In the meantime, I am going to look into the OEM codes and see if something can be generated from that.
Thanks for reading my post.

Peter