help setting up Mach 3 to drive my CNC router

Hi All..I've always loved working in wood. so when we got a Chinese 3040 cnc router with vcarve for some projects at work I fell in love! we got a much bigger machine for the work stuff (1200x1200 bed with 1.5kw motor) so I was able to take the smaller one home. considering its low 300w spindle, the machine has done some great stuff, but very slowly (or it stalls the spindle, but the mach3 feedback doesn't know its stalled).. so.. I took the plunge and bought a 2nd hand 6040 machine with 1.5kw spindle (water cooled).. and now I'm having problems.

When I bought the bigger machine, I foolishly didn't see it working. I took it home, connected it to the pc that was successfully driving the smaller unit and crossed my fingers. It worked, after a fashion.. the x y and z drives moved as they should ( think) but the spindle wouldn't fire up, even with the manual over ride. Perhaps the machine needs to still be commanded by gcode for the over ride to work? Anyway.. the pc froze up so I re booted it so I could go into the mach3 controls and re set the commands to operate the spindle (I have VERY little experience in this). then the pc broke and has a knackered hard drive.

Last night I installed vcarve on my other PC (it needs a parallel port output to drive the controller), installed Mach3 and changed the parameters as per the instructions supplied. But it wont work.
I'll try again tonight, perhaps I installed a more modern up to date Mach 3 when I should have installed the one that came with it.. I can do that tonight and see where it leads.

I'm open to any advice, but as I say my experience is very limited in this. Is there anyone that's a lot better than me in the Nottinghamshire / Derbyshire / Lincs area that could help me out if I fail?

I could bring the entire set up to you or pay petrol and beer money for you to come to me (near J27 M1)? I've been without the set up for a whole week and I miss it like crazy.. I have so many projects and ideas in my head and 10 days off at Xmas to fill! HELP! :-)

regards , Phil

Ive come to end of my abilities noz. Can't get it running and need help please. Anyone within 70 miles of Mansfield on here that I could bring my machine up to to help set it up? Or anyone want to buy it!!

PM me your phone number, I am in S Notts.

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Originally Posted by pd110961

Ive come to end of my abilities noz. Can't get it running and need help please. Anyone within 70 miles of Mansfield on here that I could bring my machine up to to help set it up? Or anyone want to buy it!!

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