What did you do today (2015)

[Bob RodgersonParticipant @bobrodgerson97362]

Hi Andrew,

when I first installed the hardware to run Path Pilot in my mill I couldn't get things to work properly. I spoke to one of their engineers in Waunakee (Jake) and it ended up with him taking control of my desk top to enable me to get the correct post processors for Tormach machines that were on one of the latest updates. It was a fairly complex process but once done I was up and running.

I have never looked back since then, Path Pilot Conversational really transforms the use of the mill for me.

Out of interest, I purchased the Duality lathe with my mill and have never used it yet. Christmas Eve I fitted the lathe to the mill and have tried to get it to work, so far only partially successful I am sure I will get it working soon. If I do I will post some video.

Bob Rodgerson

[Bob RodgersonParticipant @bobrodgerson97362]

Hi Andrew,

I forgot to add that they will be open for business tomorrow.

Bob

[Gordon WParticipant @gordonw]

Did not get any tooling etc. for xmas, just a litre of malt, so have not done much. Andrew- what was the new black pudding ? BP comes close to real beer and malt in my list of interests.

[Richard MarksParticipant @richardmarks80868]

Can we start a new forum based on the best of food and drink enjoyed by ourselves!

I agree with Andrew and Gordon that a good black pudding should be up there with real ale and malt whisky, the kippers arrived from the IOM in time for sundays breakfast followed by toast and proper home made thick cut marmalade.

[Michael GilliganParticipant @michaelgilligan61133]

Posted by Richard Marks on 26/12/2015 10:55:28:

Can we start a new forum based on the best of food and drink enjoyed by ourselves!

.

[For the sake of pedantry] … What you can start is a 'new forum thread'

Please do … probably best under the 'Tea Room' topic.

MichaelG.

[MikeParticipant @mike89748]

Black pudding from Stornoway, sausages from Lincolnshire, smoked haddock from Buckie (just up the road from me) – but not necessarily on the same plate at the same time – , Bishop's Finger ale from Kent, Glenmorangie malt whisky….. who needs al that turkey nonsense?

[Gordon WParticipant @gordonw]

Stornaway pudding, bit spicy for me but good. Manx kippers, the best. Had Aberdeen Angus beef rib yesterday, beat that. Beer, plenty of good stuff from the Islands, just getting washed to go out and try some, wifies picking us up. weather bad so will get some proper w/shop time in next week. Decided not to go out chainsawing. No time to start a new thread.

[Anonymous]

First the important matters. The black pudding was Clonakilty. It's Irish, which was a surprise to me. It was all Morrisons had on the shelf, and beggars can't be choosers. It's a very different texture and taste compared to what I am used to. However, I definitely like it and will be buying again.

Bob: I'm not sure I understand the comment on post-processors? I thought a post-processor was part of the CAM software? Anyway PathPilot seems to behave as I would expect so far except for the tool setting. My sequence for tool setting is to touch tool 0 (a length of silver steel) on the table and set Z=0 on the screen. I then put another tool in the spindle and connected up the tool setter. Rather than risk the tool setter I put it to one side and activated it manually when the tool was at about the right level. As expected when I clicked the screen button to activate setting the tool descended slowly. When the tool setter was clicked manually the tool stopped and started rising. So far so good. But when rising it was incredibly slow, about 12mm/min, and had 100mm to go. I've no idea why. Previously the tool would rise quickly after activating the tool setter and stop 5mm or so above the setter. The notes say to set the work offsets so that Z=0 is the table. I suspect that I'm not doing this correctly. Despite setting Z=0 on the screen the Z offset for G54 is definitely not zero. The next job is to ensure that PathPilot is up to date and to have another play with tool setting.

I think that Tormach will be back on Monday rather than tomorrow? In any event I will email them as it would be useful to confirm that G15/G16 are not implemented. I also need to ask some questions about the WiFi setup and of course the tool table setting. I'd also like to know whether I can get PathPilot to come up in G21 (metric) as a default rather than having to type it in every time.

Andrew

[Another JohnSParticipant @anotherjohns]

Andrew – Polar Coordinates in LinuxCNC – google it! It is (of course) implemented, just different from the way Art decided to go with Mach when he forked the code base, back in the days when LinuxCNC was called EMC.

Google is your friend – you can google for "linuxcnc polar coordinates" and see examples, syntax, etc.

Thanks for the black pudding hint!

John in an abnormally warm Ottawa – no snow, and the front lawn needs cutting!

[Bob RodgersonParticipant @bobrodgerson97362]

Hi Andrew,

you are right, I had forgotten about today being Saturday so they will not be open till Monday. I didn't realise you had had Path pilot running before, otherwise I would have suggested checking the "Max Vel" slider to ensure it is set to 100%. It's an easy enough mistake to make.

I have only just got my head around offsets but I set zero by touching off the empty spindle onto the top of the work and setting Zero there. I have also got my Haimer set up to do the same thing by nominating it as tool no 50, (G34 tool No 50).

I have a Tormach height gauge that is supposed to be able to send info direct to the tool table by pressing a button on the connecting cable but it has never worked so all of my tooling data is input manually. Hopefully you will get sorted out soon.

Bob.

[Neil WyattModerator @neilwyatt]

A whole day with no workshop & no computer

Nadolig llawen!

[Anonymous]

Bob: More progress with PathPilot. I upgraded to the latest version from the Tormach website. It all seemed fairly painless. I'm still confused by the tool setting. I know what I think it should be doing, and it worked fine with the previous Mach3 version. But I just don't understand what is going on here. I can't see why I can't use a master tool 0, but it's clearly not working. The documentation for this aspect is poor. Some of the buttons are not mentioned, or just describe what it says on the button, rather than what it actually does! I'm definitely not keen on having to reference with the spindle face. When I get round to it I have a power drawbar to install which will make it very difficult to use that method.

I thought long and hard about the Duality lathe when I ordered my mill. It went on the order, and came off again, several times before I finally missed it off. I'll be interested to see how you get on with it.

Andrew

[Bob RodgersonParticipant @bobrodgerson97362]

Hi Andrew,

I went on the Tormach workshop in October and up till then I was having extreme difficulties with tool and work offsets. They show the method of using the spindle to set to zero. you can reference z by using a known thickness under the spindle nose and entering the thickness as the setting. Similarly you can use a tool of known length such as the Haimer.

I recently made the fatal mistake of forgetting to hit the enter button when setting to zero. I didn't realise just how far an 8mm drill can penetrate steel at 3500RPM at a feed rate of 3m/min before it breaks.

I have been struggling all weekend trying to get the conversational programming to put some feed onto the Z axis (in this case the mill X axis) If I use conversational to try to turn a piece down and set the programme away it stops every time at the point where it should start the cut. I think it may be down to the type of feed it applies, maybe I should be using feed in Inches per minute rather than using a synchronised feed such as Constant Surface Speed.

I wil struggle on but if I can't get it to work I will call Tormach tomorrow. The only other thing I can think that would be causing this is some problem with the accessory cable not communicating with the controller. There isn't a separate manual for the Duality lathe you have to use the instructions for the slant pro and there are some pretty big differences between the two machines.

I'll keep you posted on progress.

[Anonymous]

Bob: I hope you're having a more successful day than me! I used to set tool lengths by touching off each tool, making a note of Z and then entering that Z each time I changed tools. Like you I forgot to hit 'Enter' and drove a M3 tap straight into the work before the spindle started. It was episodes like that, and the realisation that I was avoiding tool changes, that made me buy the tool setter. Once I got a routine sorted it was quick and easy to set tool lengths, although Mach3 was a bit clunky about actually applying and saving them.

I've wasted a good chunk of the day trying to get tool setting to work. I've watched the Tormach, and other, videos on tool setting in PathPilot. Like you say it uses the spindle nose to reference zero and hence all real tool lengths are positive. It's not clear if that is a necessity, but it's not how I work. There's no way I want the spindle nose to be my reference. With some of the parts I make it would difficult or impossible to set the Z work offset using the spindle nose. There is quite a lot of comment on the forums about tool setting not working in PathPilot with the ETS – it's beginning to look like they still haven't fixed it. Nor does it work like the video says. Trying to touch off with tool 0, ie the spindle nose, simply says that tool 0 is invalid.

PathPilot has cleaner and more consistent screens than Mach3, but it is looking like there are some small, and big, deficiencies. One irritation is the lack of a 'Ref All' button. After all on power up why wouldn't you be referencing all axes? I'm beginning to suspect that the tool setting issues may be a deal breaker for me, and I'll be going back to Mach3. I want to make parts not **** about with software.

I've composed and sent a message to Tormach – we'll see what response I get tomorrow.

To sum up so far the Scouse expression 'All fur coat and no knickers' is beginning to look apposite.

Andrew

[Bob RodgersonParticipant @bobrodgerson97362]

Bob Hi andrew,

I haven't been in the workshop yet but will give it a try tonight. Sorry to hear of your woes with Path Pilot. I am the reverse side of the coin, I just couldn't get anywhere with Mach 3 and setting offsets but have had no problems since I attended the workshop and was shown the setting method. I have noticed that the way things are set up with my mill I can't actually get the spindle nose any closer than about 1" from the table so for thin work pieces set up on the mill table I will have to use the Haimer.

[Anonymous]

Bob: Well that is interesting; I can't get my spindle nose to less than about an inch of the table either. Using the jog function it stops short. There is still about an inch to run to the lower limit switch, so I assume this is some sort of 'soft' limit to prevent crashes? I don't recall ever trying this with Mach3 so I don't know whether it is just a PathPilot thing.

I don't see why my use of a tool 0 wouldn't work, except that the tool offsets would be negative as the tools are shorter than tool 0. It doesn't explain the bizarre movements during tool setting. The Tormach video stated that the tool setting occurs at whatever feedrate is set. So I made it 100mm/min and sure enough it moved faster, but when I clicked the tool setter to simulate a touch the z axis started moving slowly (12mm/min) for about 5mm and then arbitrarily dropped to 0.6mm/min with about 170mm to go. I'd have died waiting for it to get there! I've no idea why it doesn't just back off a few millimetres and then stop as it did in Mach3?

I wonder whether metric hasn't really been tested, given that the US is still largely imperial. Certainly on other aspects of the machine and software metric is very much a poor cousin.

Andrew

[martin perman 1Participant @martinperman1]

Gentlemen,

Firstly happy New Year, I've spent my day drilling 240 holes into 60 loft legs, my drills batteries lasted 72 holes between each one hour charge so it took a while to finish, the next stage is to screw each leg to the loft rafters ready for a new floor after the insulation is laid.

During the battery charging I was charged with the dusting

Martin P

[Bob RodgersonParticipant @bobrodgerson97362]

BobHi Andrew, as far as I recall it was possible to bring the spindle nose to table level with Mach 3. I think these are all soft stops. there is a distinct difference in the way that the machine stops at the limits in Path Pilot, it is far less aggressive and doesn't stop with a clang like it did in Mach 3.

[Boiler BriParticipant @boilerbri]

 

Finally got round to fitting my new Dixon tool holder to the Chester crusader lathe that I bought in the summer. By chance when playing I moved the lathe into reverse instead of the stop position. When I did so it still carried on running in forwards. I had another go and yet again it picks up speed and carries on running forwards. This is going to be a problem when screw cutting! Has anyone else had this with there chesters?

If I let it stop and then engage reverse it does then run that way.

Bri

Edited By Boiler Bri on 27/12/2015 18:32:47

[mechman48Participant @mechman48]

Finished making connector sleeve for cylindrical squares enabling two smaller to be connected into one larger…

component parts..

Assembled overview…

George.

[Martin ConnellyParticipant @martinconnelly55370]

Bri, if you have a single phase motor with a start coil and start capacitor then the start coil only starts the motor running in the chosen direction by supplying a suitable torque for a very short time. The run coils then maintain the motion. To reverse the motor the start coil gives an initial torque in the other direction. These start coil torques are quite small and of short duration so will not be sufficient to stop a running motor and force it to rotate in the opposite direction. You must allow the motor to stop before choosing the reverse direction. It is a characteristic of some single phase motors.

Martin

[Ioan C WittmannParticipant @ioancwittmann]

I decided to sell my Chester 920. Going for something a little more modern.

[Anonymous]

Another slight worry in PathPilot are the steps for jogging. In imperial they are 0.0001", 0.001", 0.01" and 0.1"; not bad. However in metric they are 0.01mm, 0.1mm, 1mm and 10mm! I found that in Mach3 it is quite easy to unwittingly be in the wrong step size. With a 10mm step I can see me having a nasty crash before long. A 1mm largest step would have been fine.

Andrew

[NJHParticipant @njh]

Martin Perman – I have sent you a PM.

Norman

[Neil WyattModerator @neilwyatt]

Finally fitted the speed sensor to my X2 – I made a holder out of JB Water Weld by moulding it around the wire.

Also took off the table to check it was lubricated properly. It was , which left me wondering why I bothered? Also cleaned all the scales as I have a testing little job lined up which will demand much working using them to create a 'cross' shaped end to a bar, followed by some very challenging silver soldering.

Neil

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