I am new to Mach 3 and CNC world in general, but have made out fairly well up until now. I am commissioning a homebuilt router and have run into several issues that I believe are software related. For my present purposes, my CAM package consists of Vectric V-Carve Pro and Cut-3D.
The first issue that I had was when cutting a simple part, consisting of a profile cut through 3/4" material. I noticed that the sides of the part were not straight all the way through the material - there was a definite taper on several sides of the part. This happens every time I try to cut the part, but it is not consistent as to which sides come out tapered.
Moving on, I decided to install a spoil board to the top of the table and remove 0.125" to true the surface to the spindle. For this, I used a pocketing toolpath, zero at a corner of the table and I was on my way. The code executes well for a short period of time, and then either the x or y axis would physically stop, but Mach would keep going. By the time I can react and stop the program, the zero position has shifted by as much as 6". I moved on and tried to cut a simple surface from code generated in Cut-3D. This resulted in a similar problem as before in that the machine would physically stop moving. In this case though, I found that Mach had completely locked up or crashed and it had to be forced to quit. This happened 3 times before I gave up and decided to seek help.
I have tried several things, including nearly crippling the velocity and acceleration settings (thought I might be losing steps), disabled CV mode and I have tried to set it for Sherline 1/2 pulse mode. As I stated, this seems like a software issue to me, but I am a t a loss for what to try or check next. Any and all help is most appreciated.
-tulsah