Author Topic: Mach3 Help Please  (Read 2848 times)

Offline awemawson

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Mach3 Help Please
« on: July 22, 2020, 03:18:59 PM »
My CNC Plasma Cutter has developed a peculiarity  :scratch:

It is driven by a customised Mach3 screen set with not much of the original Mach3 screen being retained.

A/ If I move the cutting head to what I want to be X0,Y0 and press a button 'Zero X & Y' the displayed co-ordinates indeed set to zero.

B/ If then I load a cnc file generated by Sheetcam, it displays an image of the part, but shifted in X by 100 mm

C/ If I cut he part it is cut offset by 100 mm in X

It's as though an offset is being added to just X.

Now I've rolled the setup back by 22 jobs which is all that Mach3 saves, and it's still the same - though it IS possible I've had this problem for more than the last 22 cuts. Now I'm not that conversant with Mach3 and anyway much of the support screens normally in Mach3 are stripped from this build so I'm a bit stumped how to proceed.

. . . I can still work with it WHEN I remember to set zero X back 100 mm but I'd dearly like to solve the issue!

. . . any suggestions?
Andrew Mawson
East Sussex

Offline awemawson

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Re: Mach3 Help Please
« Reply #1 on: July 22, 2020, 04:09:11 PM »
It's amazing how writing problem down clears your mind!

Who SAYS it's a MACH3 problem - turns out that it's not.

Looking through the G code SheetCAM spat out for my most recent part, it was evident that there were virtually no moves with an X value less than 100 - (well, OK a few round the 97 mark but that's accounted for by positioning the jet to allow for the kerf)

It happens that I have SheetCAM loaded on my Laptop, and running the same component though that copy gave sensible X values.

So for some reason the copy I loaded onto my 'Escape from Microsoft' PC four months ago is generating the offset - something corrupted or glitched. Well no matter, my resurrected purged and sanified Win7 machine will return to the workshop soon with a fresh copy so no point in pursuing this on my temporary slow machine.

I suppose I must have had this issue for the four months since the Win7 debacle - doesn't time fly!
Andrew Mawson
East Sussex