Hi. All.
My machine is now thirteen years old and has over 2,800 machining hours on the clock. Just recently I've been experiencing a few problems one mechanical the other control. The mechanical problem I traced back (after some time) to a clamping screw on the X axis ball screw stepper motor coupling which was tight enough to drive in the X+ but allowed slippage when cutting in the X- direction. My current problem is with the Z axis. With the Z zero position of the cutter set and the T01 offset established instead of sending the cutter to the Z zero face of the workpiece to pick up the T01 offset the control sends the cutter to a Z-2.5mm position. If the first depth of cut is 1mm. then the cutter would be at a Z-3.5 depth at the start of the cutting cycle. The only way I can currently over come this situation is to program the first cutter depths as a Z+ value, which is sort of okay but will prove to be problematic when I use wizard generated cycles. The 2.5mm. distance is constant. If I program a Z+ 2.5 position the cutter will only cut a whisper of material. I don't use CAD/CAM as I'm an old school G code programmer and only use the embedded wizards. Any thoughts on the subject would be appreciated. Thanks.

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