Why does mach 3 do this?

[FandZ]

Please see the picture. It's something to do with vectors but I'm not sure what it is. It makes these big purple circles once I load it in mach3. I'm useing cut2d to get my tool paths. I know in cambam I can explode the lines in the dxf file and it's fine. But in cut2d I don't have that option. Besides, it's very time consuming selecting every line to machine. There must be a simple setting in mach 3 or something that I'm missing. Please help. I'm going balder by the minute.

[TOTALLYRC]

Originally Posted by FandZ Please see the picture. It's something to do with vectors but I'm not sure what it is. It makes these big purple circles once I load it in mach3. I'm useing cut2d to get my tool paths. I know in cambam I can explode the lines in the dxf file and it's fine. But in cut2d I don't have that option. Besides, it's very time consuming selecting every line to machine. There must be a simple setting in mach 3 or something that I'm missing. Please help. I'm going balder by the minute.

I think what you are looking at are called crop circles and you need to change you arc centers from inc to absolute or vise versa.

Mike

[ger21]

Change your IJ mode to incremental in General Config.

[FandZ]

Thank you for the quick replies. Crop circles? Name fits it. Will do. Thank you for pointing out where it is Gerry, I would have spent a long time looking for it. Now I need to find my backup profile for mach3. Just had mach3 crash in vista as I was exiting it. Happens a lot in vista and sometimes it destroys the profile.

[TOTALLYRC]

Originally Posted by FandZ Thank you for the quick replies. Crop circles? Name fits it. Will do. Thank you for pointing out where it is Gerry, I would have spent a long time looking for it. Now I need to find my backup profile for mach3. Just had mach3 crash in vista as I was exiting it. Happens a lot in vista and sometimes it destroys the profile.

I realized that I should have told you where it was but then as usual Gerry beat me to it.

I never had problems with vista but then I don't use the pport driver. Maybee that makes a difference.

Mike

[FandZ]

I have a dedicated pc for mach3 with xp on it but I'm afraid to use it. My g540 blew up while it was connected to it. I don't know if it was my faulty stepper motor wiring or the printer port. Either way, I haven't used it since.

On my machine, it's vista and the mach3's driver that is the problem. I've installed a copy of xp on this machine and didn't have a problem. I guess I need to just man up and try the mach3 dedicated pc again.

[ger21]

A PC can't kill anything plugged into it's parallel port.

[FandZ]

I hope your right Gerry. I'll give it a try tomorrow.

But while we are on the subject of mach 3. When I was first setting up mach 3, I remember being able to go beyond 75ipm in the motor tunning. Now I seem locked at 75IPM. I doubt I'll be able to rapid any faster, ( useing some 1/2 10tpi screws) but is there a reason why mach 3 is limiting me to 75 IPM.

[Ayjay]

Go to ports & pins in the cofig menu and change your kernel speed. 25000 pps will only give you a max speed of 75 ipm at 20,000 steps per inch. (25000 pps x 60 sec divided by 20000 steps per inch = 75 ipm)

[ger21]

Originally Posted by FandZ I hope your right Gerry. I'll give it a try tomorrow.

A parallel port can only deliver 5 volts, at very low current levels. Now, if you wire something wrong on the drive, it's possible to send high voltages and current into the parallel port and damage the PC, but not the other way around.

[FandZ]

Originally Posted by Ayjay Go to ports & pins in the cofig menu and change your kernel speed. 25000 pps will only give you a max speed of 75 ipm at 20,000 steps per inch. (25000 pps x 60 sec divided by 20000 steps per inch = 75 ipm)

Thanks a bunch, I set it at 45000 and it worked like a charm. I now have my x and y both set at 100ipm. I left my z axis at 60. I tried it all the way up to 135 but there were spots along the rails where it would stall out.

Originally Posted by ger21 A parallel port can only deliver 5 volts, at very low current levels. Now, if you wire something wrong on the drive, it's possible to send high voltages and current into the parallel port and damage the PC, but not the other way around.

Gotchya. Will be nice not to have to deal with with vista crashing Mach 3 every time I try to exit it.