Lazycam and mach3

[cncwhiz]

Topic line? Its hard to as a specific question when you are learning a system?

[ger21]

It's also hard to answer a question that isn't asked.

[cncwhiz]

So, the only difference between the "hobby" world vs what I do everyday is a stepper motor without feedback and a system like fanuc that has feedback. The mach3 is the only level that I have not played with yet. It sounds simple enough to me. The software "mach3" uses the step of the motor and the pitch of the ball screw to calculate machine movement. You also assign "M & G" codes to other machine functions. So now I need to make sure that mach3 is configured to the way I want to program it. I will be programming it for imperial so I need to re-configure it for that and this is where the video come in? After that, I need a "simple" to use program to program my setup. I need to have a post processor that fits the machine. New question, when I get the software, which company will give the best tech support and supply the necessary post?

[jalessi]

CNCWhiz,


For difficult to answer tech support questions, Brian is one of the developers of Mach.
He among others will answer your questions very promptly.

Someone here or on the Mach3 forum most likely has a post processor for your machine.

http://www.machsupport.com/

Why not purchase from a vendor that has other automation parts that you plan on purchasing for your project.

That way you build some sort of relationship, $159.00 wont buy much today in the way of tech support.

There is a lot of knowledge here, most of the members really enjoy helping others.



Jeff Alessi

[cncwhiz]

As I said at the begining of this thread, the machine was bought and is not being built. The guy is not getting any tech support and has issues. He is a sign maker not a machine builder or programmer. I am looking for the help of people like the ones in this form as well as links and tips from the web. I will be doing all the tweeking of the mach3 setup as well as programming development.

[ger21]

For a sign maker, Vectric's V Carve Pro will easily give the most bang for the buck. You won't find better support, and there are a lot of users both here and on there own support forum.

As for Mach3, I'd recommend a completely new setup rather than converting the current metric setup to imperial. Mach can have multiple configurations, so you can keep the metric setup in case you might need it and just add an inch setup. Just copy all the settings for your ports and pins and any other things you might need to setup first.

[cncwhiz]

Which will be harder? I have the book in pdf at home that the guy gave me to look at. He was thinking that it would on be about a half a day to get it set teach him a new program and be up and running?

[ger21]

What do you mean which is harder? Setting up the machine and learning V-Carve?

Setting up the machine is pretty easy, if you know the pin assignments and the steps per inch. The only thing that will take some time is setting up you accel and maax velocities, because it's usually a trial and error process.

Learning software, on the other hand, can be either relatively painless or very painful, depending on the users skill level, program ease of use, and teachers abilities.
Although with V-Carve, you should be able to start cutting in as little as 30 minutes or less, but full comprehension of all the features can take days, weeks, or even months. Features you don't use may never be learned.

[cncwhiz]

Did some reading on the machine. I don't think that they were using a "G20" son the machine is running in the "default" mm. I have the guy looking at getting the software. The program does not look to hard to run but when you run pro engineer everything else seems easy? I think I should be able to get everything setup and online without doing much re-configuring. I will change the config to a "G20" and get the program figured out. The people with the program said the have a post for mach3 so it should be a piece of cake. I like the way the mach3 works as well. It has things that took me hours in other shops to build into the controller. The pre-configured stuff looks cool.