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The most important information in getting you set-up is we need to know what drivers you have, your power supply.
Once we figure out what drivers you have, we can give you the timing requirements.
-Jason
Ok, I bought a Taig mill about 3 years ago. This week I decided to get it out again and try to use it. Well I cant! I want to cut a simple circle and a square but I dont want to spend weeks guessing at settings and such. I kno w 1,000s of people have used this machine, yet I can not find any decent instructions! I have Mach 3 and BobCad. I have wrote a few people about the set-up in Mach 3, they are helpful, but I always get.... well try this this or that. Why is there not a listing of settings, such at motor tunning that are known to work? Someone please tell me what software to buy that will come with simple instructions that is known to work with the Taig.
The most important information in getting you set-up is we need to know what drivers you have, your power supply.
Once we figure out what drivers you have, we can give you the timing requirements.
-Jason
okkkk! Maybe thats part of the problem... theres different machines I guess! Mine is the Taig2000, does that tell you about the drivers etc?
Where was the machine bought from and do you have any specifics on the stepper motors (or servos) that you have? Is there anything about the electronic drivers?
-Jason
I got it from someone used that outgrew it... thats why I dont know much about it! But it came from Nick at Cater tools new. I will find the book and see if it has more detail.
Ok, its a MicroProto MicroMill2000 from 2003. It has Lambda Seris 1000DX Drivers. I can not find anyinfo on the steppers. Should I upgrade to a servo system?
I would try contacting Microproto to get as much info from them as possible.
I would think they'd have an XML file for Mach 3 that would put all the basic settings where they should be.
Motor tuning in Mach 3 is something that you'll have to play with yourself as machines vary so there is no "perfect" written setup for those.
Dave
Dave->..
ArtSoft produced a series of videos that I found to be very informative and pretty well made. It doesn't sound like they're exactly what you're looking for, but I definitely felt more confident using Mach3 after watching them.
http://www.machsupport.com/videos/
In fact, I think I'll go watch 'em again
Whoa there cowboy. Let's figure out how to use what we have before pro-modding it.Originally Posted by dixonjk
Start working through a plan and work out specific questions. Sounds like you need to see if you can find a mach3 XML config file for the Taig2000 with Lambda blah blah. But you may or may not find that and it may not be 100% correct for your setup either. So there's going to be some setup time.
You should probably come up with a fairly simple starter project and base your next questions on how to do that specific work. This avoids the less fruitful "how do I do... 'stuff' with this thing?" questions.
Beware crashing the bit into the work table. That can happen if you define your stock too deep in the CAM software, set the steppers too fast and they stall, or don't properly set the zero before starting to run the g-code file in mach3.
There are hundreds of different Taig motor/driver configurations. That's one reason why there aren't always straight "this is how you turn it on" tutorials. There are many different ways to use the CAD/CAM/mach3 software too.
Just integrate 2 things into your expectations:
1. It'll do great things for you which you never dreamed possible
2. There is a learning curve
[It seems a bit old for Mach3. If anything, it would have come with Mach1. Originally, Microproto used a drive system that wasn't compatible with step/direction drivers like Mach. I'm not sure what year they changed over, but it was around then. Have you tried running it with MPS2000, which runs in DOS? This should have been included with the mill, but you can probably get it for free from Taig if you've lost the disk. It's not as slick as Mach, but it does work and doesn't require much of a computer. If you have an old Win98 box around, that will restart in DOS, you can try it, it should work fine. Another program to try is TurboCNC, which is shareware. If you get it running but need more speed, then think about upgrading the drivers and motors, but that's a major project which can be pretty expensive.]
Andrew Werby
www.computersculpture.com
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