What did you do today (2015)

Martin Perman - I have sent you a PM.

Norman

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

Hi Andrew,

my hunch was right about the type of feed command to input to get the conversational diameter reducing programme to work. I changed the G-code so that the feeds were no longer CSS but an actual feed in inches/minute Once I did this I had success, I even managed to get a nice 1/8" radius and the diameter was absolutely spot on to within about .0002" of programmed finish diameter.

As you can see from the video there is a bit of chatter on the Aluminium test piece that I turned. I tried a bit of 2 1/4" EN36 but boy did it chatter, I wasn't using a particularly sharp tool so I will try again with a fresh cutting tool.

If that doesn't work Here is a link to it.

https://youtu.be/_RZvV3ranoM

Thank you for the explanation Martin. That would seem to be the style of motor fitted.

Brian.

Bob: That looks pretty good - I'm glad some-one is having success with PathPilot! I visit CNCZone very rarely, but I did spend a couple of hours last night reading through the PathPilot sub-forum. My impression is that it is still rather unstable, particularly in metric mode with some functions not working, or randomly reverting to imperial.

I'll wait and see what response I get from Tormach later today, but at the moment I'm inclined to revert to Mach3. That's a shame in a way as PathPilot seems to be a cleaner, more logical, layout and definitely has potential. But it's just not there yet as far as I'm concerned. I want to make parts, not faff around with software.

Andrew

Hi Andrew,

I am so used to working with imperial units that I found it easy to use Path Pilot and don't seem to have had the problems you are encountering. I use metric cutters so when I enter tooling settings I convert to imperial. Other than that I have no problems with the milling side, however the speeds and feeds for the Duality Lathe Conversational programming just don't seem to work. I will need to contact Tormach and find out if they know why. For the time being I will persevere trying to get some useful work out of the Duality.

Bob

Hi Andrew - as you'll no doubt know - LinuxCNC works very well in metric, it's most likely the GUI on top that Tormach made that is potentially having difficulty with metric/imperial.

I do 100% of my work in metric using LinuxCNC on two mills and a small lathe - no issues, even if I use a 12.7mm end mill once in a while. (of course, that's a 1/2 inch end mill).

The USA is still very inch based, unfortunately. Give Tormach a call; despite being an American company, they do sell to other places, as you are proof of. They will fix it; metric is infiltrating business in a major way, even if the hobbyists don't know what a mm is.

I have not ordered the PathPilot CD, I use a different conversational programming program currently called "LinuxCNC Features" which is doing ok.

FYI - while finishing a coffee - John.

Yesterday I instigated a massive clear up in one corner of the workshop. The ultimate aim is to swap the positions of the shaper and surface grinder, and extract the broken part of the shaper to see if I can repair it. Otherwise it'll have to go. At the moment it is emulating a one ton boat anchor. I had a good clear out under the bench and binned all sorts of stuff, most of which I'd forgotten I had. I got rid of loads of parts I made for a steam loco when I was a small kid, and a whole heap of steel bars of unknown parentage. It looks like I tried to turn them and the finish was awful. So the recycling man can have them. I also started cutting up loads of hot rolled steel stock so that it can be stored under the bench rather than me tripping over the darn things all the time. That was until the power hacksaw blade broke. I thought I had a spare blade but I'm blowed if I can find it. Bit of a pain as it means that the black steel bar propped up in this picture are staying where they are as they are too heavy to lift, but need 'walking':

I've also made significant progress with PathPilot following some email exchanges with Tormach. Product support from Tormach is second to none, by a very long way. I got the first detailed reply within a couple of hours of them starting work; very impressive for the first day back after a holiday.

They confirmed that G15/G16 are not implemented and recommended I didn't use polar co-ordinates. I never have, but I was curious as to why their website still mentioned them. I've given them the link to the offending page so they can expunge the references. I also now have the incantations needed for polar moves in G01, should I ever need them.

They also confirmed that G21 (metric) stays in force through power cycling. That's good as all my CNC programs work in metric, irrespective of whether the original 3D CAD model was metric or imperial - about 50/50 in my case.

Apparently I'm not the first person to comment on the jog sizes in metric mode. These may well get changed in a future update. I've suggested 0.002, 0.01, 0.1 and 0.2mm.

After some help from their network guru I got the controller to connect to my BT WiFi hub. I was being too clever and using the wrong SSID and password. After a bit of faffing about I found the shared directories on my main computer but the system refused to connect. I'm pretty sure that's a Windoze problem on my PC. Given that the PC is old, is still running XP and is due for imminent replacement I'm not inclined to waste any more time on it. I think that Tormach are planning to integrate 'Dropbox' into a future update - as they've been struggling with network issues.

That's enough for one post, and I need more coffee! Then I'll discuss tool setting.

Andrew

Regarding my recent Mains tripping, I have now dumped the old kettle and bought a new one and also replaced the wall socket with a 2 pole switch with a neon indicator. The original socket (16 years old and used almost continually) I dismantled to look at the contacts, no burning of the contacts at all. It was a 2 pole switch. Which of course does not explain how it was tripping in the 3 am period as it would have been isolated anyway?

I am coming round to the idea it may be mains spiking, a conversation with the electricity supplier would not give details , I doubt he would know.

I think I mentioned that the 2 ring mains showed very high earth leakage figures like 554 M and 999 M respectively. So they are safe.

Waiting now for the next trip out! We have been free of any for some days now.

Clive

Right, coffee supplied, so on to tool setting. It turns out to be very simple. In Mach3 the tool setter is activated once and the offset noted for each tool. In PathPilot the tool setter is activated twice, ostensibly for better accuracy. Why oh why didn't the manuals say that? It would have saved a lot of grief and confusion.

When the set tool offset button is clicked the machine moves down in Z at the feedrate that has been manually set. Once the tool setter is activated the tool rises slightly and then starts moving down again at a much slower rate, about 12mm/min, until the tool setter is activated again, upon which the tool is retracted. What confused me is that on the second move the distance to go was over 100mm, which would have driven the tool into the table. I was disinclined to put an expensive tool setter in the way to see what happened. So not only did I fail to get the tool offset recorded, but the system was left in a state with an incredibly slow feedrate, which looked like a metric/imperial problem, and an error saying the tool setter hadn't been activated when I thought it had been as I'd clicked it.

Now that I've finally got the idea I ran though a couple of tools measuring the offsets. Then I set an arbitrary Z work offset using a gauge block and then checked that each tool change has the correct zero, which it did.

The only disagreement with Tormach is regarding the method of measuring tool offsets. As Bob says Tormach push the concept of positive real tool offsets, which is the distance from the tool tip to the mating surface with the spindle nose. In one sense this is good because the number is always positive and is the length of the tool. It is also simple to measure offline using a granite surface block and height gauge as sold in the Tormach TTS kit. I don't have the kit, so I prefer to use a master tool (0 in my case) which is generally longer than all the other tools. This should, in theory, create safe clearances after tool changes. However, it does mean that the tool offsets recorded are negative numbers and are cumbersome to measure without a tool setter. However my method suits me and I think I will be sticking with it. As Bob has mentioned the spindle nose stops short of the table due to soft limits, so you have to reference off something else, most obviously the machine vice. For me that's a PITA as most of my CNC milling is done with the work mounted directly on the table or on a sacrificial plate. The vice is probably used less than 10% of the time.

I hope that PathPilot is better at saving and applying tool offsets. In Mach3 you had to open, and apply, the tool table after measuring the offsets, otherwise it ignored them. Also, they weren't actually saved until you shutdown, when you were offered the choice of saving tool and work offsets.

I will need to have a careful trawl through my CAM post-processor file, as I get the impression from CNCZone that PathPilot is quite fussy about the code generated, particularly for tool changes and offsets. I'll probably end up writing some simple hand code and air cutting to make sure things do what I expect.

I am very impressed with the level of support from Tormach and I'm pleased that the most critical issues have been resolved. So I'm going to change my mind and stick with PathPilot for the time being while I check out it's capabilities and foibles. I will be hanging onto the old Tormach controller with Mach3 though, jut in case.

Andrew

For the Sieg KX series of machine we have written a new screen to make tool offsets easy.

For a start it's been written with touch screens in mind and colour coded into groups.

Also everything you need is on one screen, tool offsets and MDI come to mind.

To set a tool offset you position the tool clear of any clamps and zero the Z axis. You then enter the tool number, jog down until you just touch the work and press Set Tool Offset, this then swaps the value in the Z box and applies it to the H [ hight] box.

You then press Tool Offset On which will be lit and once pressed will be off and the Z box returns to the value which as Andrew mentions will be negative.

Once the GOTO Zero button is pressed the tool goes back to Z zero which is the clearance plane and subsequent tools can be set.

Setting on top of the work and using negative offsets means that in the event of a retract where the tool offset gets lost it always goes up. The opposite way can in some cases plunge a tool into the work or the bed.

Came to work. Almost the only one apart from those ex-pat contractors who didn't go home to India for the fortnight. Nobody thought to water the plants and with the aircon off the sea of computers in here makes it pretty warm.
Using our brand new 45in 4k UHD office tele in sound only to listen to the test match as it might raise eyebrows to put Skysports onto a test account right in the middle of the holidays.

BobHi Andrew,

glad to hear that you have had success with things. I too have been very impressed with Tormach's after sales service. Their response time is really fast and they I have always ad any issues resolved quickly by their technicians.

I will probably speak to them after the weekend regarding the inability to get the CSS feed to work with the lathe. Meantime I will continue with a magneto sprocket I am making using Path Pilot.

I ordered and received a copy of the Pathpilot restore DVD but discovered that it's actually an image of the authorised install, rather than a setup program. Hardly surprising really. The bottom line though is that until some clever LinuxCNC expert (which rules me out then) has figured out how to splice the PP GUI into LinuxCNC proper, it's of little use for the likes of me. I'll sit back and wait while the LinuxCNC boys get on with that.

So I'm going to stick with the standard LinuxCNC setup for now. Thanks for the reference to LinuxCNC Features, John. Not something I'd registered myself even though it was doubtless staring me in the face. The forum thread is here.

Murray

Murray,

Problem with the standard Linux setup is that it is lacking a lot of what Tormach's guys have rectified. Things like the trajectory planner which they knew about 4 years ago and did nothing.

It's not until now with basically Tormach driving Linux instead of the geeks that anything has been done.

Trajectory planner sorted and a decent GUI at long last - something that has been over due since the start of time.

For anyone not familiar with Linux CNC this is the most commonly used AXIS screen.

Like etch-a-sketch on acid Anyone spot the start and stop buttons ?

This is Tormach's screen.

Do we need a vote ?

That link you posted above is typical 30 pages of wading through bumf and hardly anyone can understand it or get it working.

The restore disk does work but you need the Mesa 5125 card in your machine, about £80 worth, far less than a windows license or Mach license and then you have control

John - The Axis screen uses what is known as "dominant design" - if you can figure out how to use a VCR or tape deck or CD player or... you should recognize the buttons.

Not saying what Axis UI does is the best or most suitable, but they did use button symbols that are a) in common use and b) not tied to one language, and c) for those who can not read, are a godsend. (either because of the literacy rate, or because of writing differences, eg. those who use logographic representations, or other alphabets such as hebrew or whatever)

So, I'd expect that the majority of the world would understand the Axis screen above PathPilot or your Mach3 screen.

Just saying... John.

That's the problem, no one can understand these bloody icons.

Ok on a remote TV control where you have 5 square inches to fit 13,874 buttons but this is a machine tool for Christ's sake.

So we need to get rid of all the big green and red start and stop buttons that you have a chance of seeing and hitting to replace them with an icon.

Had a warning light come on in the truck the other week and even the garage didn't know what it was.

Finally turned out to be a warning light telling me one of the lights wasn't working !!!

If they were that clever why didn't it swap the bulb ???? Didn't help that ALL the lights were working anyway.

Sorry English speaking world and Cycle start means cycle start. Still don't know which Icon on AXIS is cycle start.

God help us if we need stop. No way that screen could get by H&S on a commercial application and for once it's something I would agree with.

I'm not against Linux, far from it I feel Tormach is the breath of life it has needed for years. People want to just use machines and not be programmers or geeks. I can honestly see them driving this forward and making more aware of it. You buy a Fanuc or Haas machine and you don't need to know how it's programmed do you ?

I really hope so. Mach 3 has reached the end of it's product life and it's no longer supported, in fact the last versions are bug ridden and Brian Barker is only interested in Mach 4 but it's taking that long to get to fruition that I honestly wonder if he's interested in other than OEM on special purpose machines.

Early versions up to .042 of Mach 3 on a mill are pretty good. Lathe is crap, it can't thread to save it's life and the add on card manufacturers can't keep up or don't want to.

With Linux being open source it's in no ones interest to spend 1,000's of hours on a public program UNLESS you have a machine you can tie it to. And that was the problem, they didn't understand what engineers want.

No engineer would be happy with a screen like that but unlike Mach it's not easy to change. They say it is because they understand the program but if it was that easy why, until Tormach came along didn't anyone do anything about it ?

Posted by John Stevenson on 30/12/2015 02:01:56:

Now, *that* is a good question.

There have been other screens - another popular one is "gmoccapy", and the MachineKit people (a recent "fork" of LinuxCNC), have another direction that I have not tried yet.

May I give you my thought? Other than conversational programming, my main interface with my larger CNC mill is a USB pendant; there is no traditional keyboard connected. I do have a track ball (clicking to load a file, for instance) and a numeric keypad (entering offsets) but other than that, the operation of the mill is accomplished with the usb pendant. (XHC HB04 is IIRC what it is)

Thank you for the conversation - John.