Oh Oh bought a Taig CNC Mill Today

[madman]

Well im a newbie here at cnc forum. Nice site. I got my wife to let me buy a taig mill cnc with the larger table and a laptop and controller ect. NOW how do you run this thing LOL. Oh yeah she even let me put it in the Kitchen on the table (of course i put cardboard underneath it) What a sweetie. Anyhow i have to become a computer cnc expert real quick. Any tips? I never used mach 2 but have a little cnc experience. thanx
ibrew54@rogers.com

[MechanoMan]

What controller did you get?

Mach3 will not work on a lot of laptops due to the power-saving chipsets not dealing out the timing consistency required for the task. That timing consistency was not guaranteed within the parallel port specification, it's not necessary for running printers.

If you have this problem, you can get stalls at unpredictable times even if the speed it turned way down. A stall as the Z-motor lifts upwards is common and very bad since, unless you have some sort of limit switch, it will misunderstand where the Z-axis is and drive the bit through the table.

Not all laptops have this problem. A USB-to-parallel-cable adapter will not fix the problem, it makes it worse. A SmoothStepper will definitely fix the problem.

I never got satisfactory results with my desktop PC running Mach3. I had to switch to SmoothStepper.

[madman]

Smooth Stepper? HM i think in in for a learning curve. I am running mach 2 on this unit> I have to get it all figured out yet. No instructions or book came witjh it and i dont even have a mach 2 book to look at. thanx Mike

[jalessi]

Madman Mike,

This may help a bit.

http://www.machsupport.com/docs/Mach3Mill_1.84.pdf

http://www.machsupport.com/videos.php

http://www.machsupport.com/forum/index.php


Welcome to the Zone,


Jeff...

[jalessi]

Awesome Taig resources & links

http://www.cartertools.com/index.html#OMS

[madman]

I only have Mach 2 .Are the mach 2 and mach 3 almost the same>> Thanx Mike

[jalessi]

Mike,

Mach2 can be upgraded to Mach3 for no charge, just download Mach3

http://www.machsupport.com/downloads.php

Make sure you save a copy of your original Mach1Lic.dat file.

See attached jpg to attach pictures.

Jeff...

[MechanoMan]

Originally Posted by madman Smooth Stepper? HM i think in in for a learning curve. I am running mach 2 on this unit> I have to get it all figured out yet. No instructions or book came witjh it and i dont even have a mach 2 book to look at. thanx Mike

Yeah upgrade to Mach3. AFAIK it's a free download.

The question is also what controller box you have there. You've got a computer, and a mill with stepper motors on it. There's a box with a parallel port plug on one side and stepper motor plugs on the other. What is in the box is is very important. Some are put together by amateur mfgs and have no labeling on them but nonetheless there's gonna be a board from a specific mfg in there.

[Speedygonzales]

hi Madman.
where are you located in Canada?
im in Toronto,

still a nub, dont have equipment but I want to see one of these smaller cnc's in person.

good luck
regards
Mike

[madman]

I live in the kitchener waterloo Area.I guess i have to ??take apart the control box and >> what look inside for the mane of the controller printed on a circuit board or something? What type of controller shpould i have for running mach 3?. I think the controller I have is the one that Taig sells to the Public. The unit did come from Taig directly i think.

[Jeff-Birt]

You have a MicroProto 2000 or 3000? The controllers on those are fine and should work as is with Mach. If there is any part numbers or such on it (or post a picture) someone might be able to tell you what it is.

If you need to replace it look at using a Gecko G540. They are a nice 4-axis stepper driver that is a great match for the Taig: http://cnczone.com/products3.aspx . I'll be releasing a complete 4-axis drive box using a G540 in the next few weeks as well.