Ray, At 07:19 AM 6/7/2007, you wrote: >Glad that we got that all figured out and you've got what you need >going. The ball endmill called out in the chips.ngc program was >intended to be able to handle all those deep cuts without breaking.
I noticed that when I scaled the endmill to be small enough to get any deatail it then had too short a "working part to make the plunge and still cut all the way down. Thank god for plastic!! I thought about scaling the z axis to 1/3 of x and y and makeing one cut then rezeroing and rescaling to 2/3 for another then make a final pass at the same scale as x and y. That should make the passes "doable" with a standard end mill. I realize that this is just an exercise, but hands-on exercises almost always teach me something, sometimes something I didn't realize I needed to know. >Now fifw, it seems to me that it's time to modify the interpreter to >allow for a modal scaling g-code. Looks like it could be useful. >BTW you must be using full step drivers for a 4k input scale. If I >remember, the official version used 16k and quarter steps. I know you >said you'd built up your own system. Could you describe it a bit more >for us. Pics on the wiki would be nice. I am using an old D&M 2 table top CNC mill that Paul Hamler found for me a few years ago. It is a sherline mill with steppers mounted in a big blue box with proprietary electronics and software. It uses the 5804 chip and is prsently set up for single steps and ballast resistor drive. I can do some trace cutting and rewiring on the cards and get more steps but I really need to trash the cards and go to a chopper drive. I disabled everything but the spindle speed control and the power supply, reconnected the axis driver cards to the power supply and routed the card's step and direction inputs to a newly installed parallel port connector. It's probably obvious that I am pretty much a hands-on type. I am an electronics engineer retired from the Nuclear power industry where I did instrumentation and control design. Where I worked engineers were not allowed to "touch" things so we had to spend hours or weeks meticulously designing and documenting and co-ordinating a project for someone else to do which we could have done in a few hours of hands-on work. In order to compensate for not being allowed to "play with the toys" at work, I have always kept a few electromechanical projects going at home. I have found EMC CNC to be an almost perfect diversion. It lets me play with computers, electronics and machines all at once and most importantly I don't really have to make anything but parts for my machines. My goal is to use the little machine to gain as much proficiency and knowledge as possible on this scale and then convert my Powermatic Millrite mill to CNC. Thanks again for the patience and support. Cecil ------------------------------------------------------------------------- This SF.net email is sponsored by DB2 Express Download DB2 Express C - the FREE version of DB2 express and take control of your XML. No limits. Just data. Click to get it now. http://sourceforge.net/powerbar/db2/ _______________________________________________ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
