Would this work for scaling size up or down?

[wolfdagon]

Sorry if this is the wrong place to post this. I have been reading a lot of the treads on the zone and have seen many where someone asks about scaling the size up or down.

It seems to me that an easy way to do this would be to make temporary changes in Mach 3. For instance, say you have the g-code for a design, but you want to make it twice as big. If our lead screws have 10 tpi then temporarily chang that setting in Mach 3 to 20 tpi. The computer then thinks that it is moving 1" for every 20 turns of the lead screw. But since you still actually have 10 tpi lead scews those 20 turns are actually moving it 2" for every 1" of your design.

I keep thinking there must be some reason this won't work, but so far I can't think of one. Of course, you would have to remember to reset it to the correct setting once you were done.

[vladdy]

an alternative is kellyware kcam, will scale [seperately] x,y,and z axis', and save resulting gcode file...
I believe the unregistered version had a 500 line limit?? not sure offhand

[ger21]

Changing the steps/unit in Mach3 requires re-tuning the motors, which would be a pita to do often. A far easier way to cut something at double size is to type "2" into the scale boxes to the right of the X and Y DRO's.

[stevehuckss396]

Originally Posted by wolfdagon I keep thinking there must be some reason this won't work, but so far I can't think of one. Of course, you would have to remember to reset it to the correct setting once you were done.

You may need to run with double the bit size. There is only one way to find out so try it.

[wolfdagon]

Originally Posted by ger21 Changing the steps/unit in Mach3 requires re-tuning the motors, which would be a pita to do often. A far easier way to cut something at double size is to type "2" into the scale boxes to the right of the X and Y DRO's.

I don't actually have a machine yet, but I have looked at the Mach 3 demo. It's been a while, though, and I did not remember it having that feature. That would definitely be simpler.