I have made the decision to CNC it!

Well Steve, its good to have materials at hand when the good idea light comes on, lol. This happens to be why I can no longer fit my truck into my garage. Seems I have more "resources" than good ideas.

Tom
 
Yeah, Tom. These guys are bad. They got me sucked in, too.
 
I am a little late in getting in to this thread.

I have been using Windows 7 Pro for about 3 years. Have the XP simulation on it, and have found that XP simulation does not always play nicely with software. 7 often interferes and closes XP and puts me back to 7. It is OK for a house computer, but would not want to have it running my cnc mill.

I have a dedicated computer with XP on my Bridgeport clone, using Mach 3. I did the conversion about 4 years ago, and it is very stable.

Would add my voice to the folks who have suggested a dedicated XP which never goes on the internet. Also it should probably be a desk top, because the folks trying to run laptops have had a lot of problems. And the desk top is cheap, and easy to fix and replace components if needed.

Good luck, and hang in there.

Harvey
 
Ok, I have been working on the mill and Mach3, when on the MDI screen and move the x or y axis with single line g code, that axis will move, but when I do the same thing with the z axis, it will not move. You can hear the motor, and the rdo moves, but the head does not move. But, if I move it with the keyboard or with the mpg, it will move.
 
zero z well above table but not all the way up
type in the mdi line
G1 F10 press enter
z1.0 press enter
and tell me if it goes up 1 inch
if it does
go to mach3 config
motor tuning
and reduce the velocity to 30 and acceleration to 10
click save
open mach3 config and click save setting on the bottom of the list
and try again
see if that works
make sure z can move up 1 inch and zero Z
type in the mdi
G0 press enter
Z1.0 press enter
should move up 1 inch
if it dont
zip your mach3mill.xml file located in c:\mach3 and post it here i can check it
steve
 
Last edited:
Someone may have already said this so please excuse if so.

I have used windows 7 pro with xp simulation from microsoftfor about 3 years.. The virtual XP is not very compatible with a lot of my XP programs which run well on a regular XP computer. I have basically quit using the virtual program for anything.

I converted a Bridgeport clone about 4 years ago, and run it on an old desktop with XP using various drawing programs, and converting the files with BobCad 21.

You may want to check the mach 3 website for compatibility with virtual XP before you go in that direction. There was already a suggestion that an old desktop with xp would not cost much and IMO is a much better solution.

Hope this is helpful,

Harvey Price
 
Wen you consider how cheap an old stand alone machine is (I've bought several IBM P4 desktop boxes with a licensed copy of Xp for $100!), its totally not worth having anything other than a 100% dedicated machine for your mill etc.

The notion of not having it on the net is a bit odd. I couldn't really do it for the way I work. I sit in comfort at my desktop upstairs doing my cad work, then save all my files to my google drive. Walk down to the shop, fire up the mill machine, and just call up the files. Don't even have to worry about my intranet working or not.

Just limit your surfing to anything but reputable places, and have security essentials running. Never had any issues. Mind you I've been in the computer biz since the days of 8086s with 64k of ram (and before!).
 
well, got the machine working fine, one small problem I need help with in fixing. (not the Solidworks problem, that is still ongoing). Ok, I used the D2nc wizard to cut a circle, which the machine did. Using a .125 mill, I directed the machine to cut a .250 outside circle. After measuring the circle, it measured .265. Asked again to cut a streight line,1 inch. When I measured the line, it was 1.118 long.
So what is it that I need to do to correct these errors?
 
Have you used a dial indicator, and set the steps under the settings page? The one where you tell it to move "x", then punch in what it actually moved.

It sort of sounds like your count is off.
 
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