Taig Mill CNC retrofit; inch vs. millimeter woes...


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Thread: Taig Mill CNC retrofit; inch vs. millimeter woes...

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    Default Taig Mill CNC retrofit; inch vs. millimeter woes...

    Hi everyone--

    I have a Taig mill which I've just upgraded to CNC with a kit from Jeff Birt at Soigeneris - so I'm starting with prewired motors, cables, and a Mach3 profile that is supposed to be preconfigured for this machine.

    Basic functions are intact. I had to go into the Mach3 Configuration --> Ports and Pins --> Motor Outputs and toggle "DirLowActive" for the Y and Z axes because these were going in the wrong direction out of the box. So at this point I have at least the three axes moving in the correct directions.

    Now I'm having a problem with getting the motions to be working correctly in the proper units. I'm confused right now and just learning Mach3 on top of it, so I will explain as clearly as I can:

    When Mach3 starts with the profile I'm using and the motors energize, Mach3 is coming up in "MM" units - by which I mean that if I go to the "Settings (Alt-6)" page, the box below "MM's" is lit green, while the box below "Inch" is gray. However, when I manually enter motions on the MDI screen, my table seems to be moving in inch units. So for example, if X is at 0.0000, and I enter "X1" on the MDI screen, the table jogs to the left by what looks like one inch (I haven't tried to measure the motion exactly; just by eyeball it looks like a one-inch motion).

    If I switch Mach3 over to Inch units, either by G20 or by ticking the "Inch" box on the "Settings (Alt-6)" page, then the physical motions are multiplied by 25.4 times: Meaning that, starting at X=0.0000, if I enter "X0.1" into the MDI screen, the table will move left by 2.54 physical inches (again, judging by eye). Switching back into "MM" units (via G21) will then produce the displayed coordinate of X=2.5400.

    My Config --> Motor Tuning page shows "40000" in the "Steps per" box.

    Can anyone give me some guidance, as to the correct way to set all of this right? Currently I'm not sure if I should be trying to correct things by changing values in the Mach3 settings pages, or by editing the XML profile file directly, or in some other way.

    Or, if someone has an XML profile for a Taig Mill being run by an Ethernet Smooth Stepper + G540, that might help me as well.

    Thanks for any advice!

    --dave

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    Default Re: Taig Mill CNC retrofit; inch vs. millimeter woes...

    Aha!

    Nevermind, I just found it finally, after beating my head against things for most of this morning. Turns out that "Config --> Select Native Units" was set to "MM".

    Switching this to "Inch", seems to make everything work correctly now.

    Well maybe this will help someone else, at some later time...

    all for now--

    --dave



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    Default Re: Taig Mill CNC retrofit; inch vs. millimeter woes...

    Quote Originally Posted by mosaicdave View Post
    Aha!

    Nevermind, I just found it finally, after beating my head against things for most of this morning. Turns out that "Config --> Select Native Units" was set to "MM".

    Switching this to "Inch", seems to make everything work correctly now.

    Well maybe this will help someone else, at some later time...

    all for now--

    --dave
    There ya go. That is one of the most common mistakes made by folks setting up Mach 3. Good job. Sorry for the sore head!! Dan.



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Taig Mill CNC retrofit; inch vs. millimeter woes...

Taig Mill CNC retrofit; inch vs. millimeter woes...