On 8/14/2018 10:28 PM, Dan Bloomquist wrote:
That is the catch. Mach3
will glitch, especially if you switch apps while it is running. That can
cause expensive booboos.
Correct, you can't do that. Also you can't insert and unplug USB drives
while running, don't open a browser and listen to Pandora etc.
Don't open another window and start typing a letter, etc.
Treat the controller as a controller, and don't touch it to do other
things than to make your part.
That is your only shot at making Mach3 work reliably.
Glitches can happen and they can be very expensive.
Make sure you cut up a bunch of cheap scrap steel before loading a 4x8
sheet of 316 stainless!
If you talk to the Mach crew they will tell you that Mach 4 is the thing
to use now, but that usually requires a hardware board and your THC may
not be compatible.
There have been some good Mach3 controlled plasma cutters made and then
again there have been a lot of really poor quality plasma cutters made
as well.
The issues may not be all due to Mach3. If the gear ratio between the
motors and the linear axes is not sufficient, you will never get good
cuts. THCs vary wildly in quality. The better ones are not cheap.
I don't think that there was ever an effective Mach3 solution to square
a gantry by homing without a hardware board like the Smoothstepper.
As I recall, when driving steppers with a parallel port, I think there
was a lot of glitches in the software when trying to implement a gantry
squaring solution. You can do your own research on this at the
Machsupport forum.
https://www.machsupport.com/forum/index.php?topic=25867.0
This kind of thing was why Mach4 was developed.
In any case, Mach3 is just part of the puzzle.
Dave
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