From several exchanges with Rory, I was able to understand better what was needed and will do some "re-tuning" on the hardware first in order to get a smoother running system and he was right, it was all about the calibration!!! Some of the initial issues were in tightening the rollers too much when building the unit (This is a 420 system) - my concern was that it would be hard to get at some of those places when it was finally assembled and that a loose screw while moving would be a bad situation - but in the course of tightening things too much, I also created another problem with overtasking the stepper motor by also making the ballscrews too tight (you should be able to rotate all of them by hand) and then was trying to overcome that condition with software options in Mach3. Like most machines, there's the need to see it wiggle, move and actually do some "work" and when you're just starting to see that happen, your mind is on dozens of other small details but with some patience, time and persistence even the smaller details will get solved and the machine will run even better than it is today. Rory went out of his way to be clear and concise in his help and as a result I was able to run a test file today that took just over two hours and it went thru without an issue. Oddly enough I've worked in both metric and inches for a long time but prefer inches so what now seems pretty straightforward wasn't so much when I could not either remember or find the exact method and steps to get the machine to that status. My hats off to Rory for going out of his way to help me out with this issue of getting Mach3 setup in inches instead of metric. Please Log in or Create an account to join the conversation. Until then, I'm programming in English, converting to metric and watching the same things happen on an otherwise very capable system. If you have any ideas of what might cause this I would be very interested to hear from you. I believe this is probably a Mach3 setting issue but so far have been unable to find any solutions thru any of their resources as well. I have purposely added a "G20" line in the code in the beginning and it's also in the automatic string of characters that Mach3 looks at when it starts. I have a rather strange situation happening - I have recently built the 420 unit with the parallel card and the UC-100 motion controller (first built and tested with the USB card and was able to use via WINPC much like the previous user) Then swapped out the USB for the parallel card and the UC100 device and after some significant changes to the setup on Mach3 I now have it working again - but with an exception that I cannot find a solution for - I can only run programs written in metric - the software "switch" for either metric or inches IS set to inches (have tried re-triggering this multiple times and it appears to operate as it should with a lighted indicator showing "inches" - but when a program is loaded (written in inches) it operates in metric. Once you have setup your Mach3 software and your UC100 drivers etc (As per the above videos) you will need the STEPCRAFT profile settings to import into Mach3. therefore the machine can be controlled on a laptop as as-well as a desktop. All the communication between Mach3 and the controller happens over USB communication and then the UC100 itself generates the motor signals for machine control. the UC100 is a full 6 axis motion controller. The UC100 is a lot more than just a parallel to USB converter. The UC100 will plug directly into the STEPCRAFT when a LPT card is loaded in the machine. The UC100 from CNC Drive allows you to control a CNC with your USB port. However - we do not recommend this as there are well known issues with LPT connection with Mach3.įor best results you need to have a USB motion controller. Once you have an LPT card in the machine you can connect the machine to a Desktop PC that also has a LPT output. The WinPC modules will not allow you to talk to Mach3. You need the STEPCRAFT machine configured with an LPT card - not with the WinPC cards.
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