Hello Lovely CNC People

[Archy]

Thanks Ben.

Yes I have been thinking about a 4th axis but budget is a cruel mistress.

You are spot on regarding the heal depth on a full body jazz guitar. I had been mulling that one over myself these last few days.

There are several ways to get round this:

1) Build laminated necks.
2) Build thinner bodies
3) Build a 2piece heal or a shallower heal with a thick cap. Kind of like the Benedetto style.

I thought I had worked out all the CAD CAM stuff (ignorance is bliss), so your Mach3 addition made me interested in why you have that extra stage between f360 and UCCNC. Is it because you wanted a controller so you didn't have to run a PC all the time?
That's what I would like to do. Saves the PC crashing and your work going down the pan.

Regards

Archy

[BeeceUK]

I thought I had worked out all the CAD CAM stuff (ignorance is bliss), so your Mach3 addition made me interested in why you have that extra stage between f360 and UCCNC. Is it because you wanted a controller so you didn't have to run a PC all the time?
That's what I would like to do. Saves the PC crashing and your work going down the pan.

Regards

Archy

Hi,

Im not entirely sure what you mean by this?

What I was meaning was that I just generate my toolpaths in Fusion and export the toolpaths using a Mach3 post processor in Fusion with a .tap file extension.

I then load this up on the PC attached to the CNC which runs UCCNC and the file works flawlessly.

I hope this explains your question?

[Archy]

Hi Ben

I thought Mach3 was a type of controller and since you can post process for UCCNC in F360 I didn't understand it's inclusion in the chain.

Could you explain further? I seem to be misunderstanding what Mach3 is or how it can function.

[BeeceUK]

Hi,

Im probably not the best person to give you a technical answer as I'm a total noob to this myself, but basically I have Fusion360 set up to use the MAch3 Mill post processer. This means that it creates file that are native to the Mach3 control software that alot of people use. UCCNC can read these files and run them and in my limited experience , runs them perfectly.

regards

[JAZZCNC]

Hi Ben

I thought Mach3 was a type of controller and since you can post process for UCCNC in F360 I didn't understand it's inclusion in the chain.

Could you explain further? I seem to be misunderstanding what Mach3 is or how it can function.

Hi Archy,

Maybe I can explain it a little clearer. Mach3 and UCCNC are both control software and do exactly the same job which is taking the G-code you create in F360 and translate this into motion at the machine along with other tasks like starting/stopping the spindle, monitoring limits, E-stop, etc along with other tasks.

Now, mach3 has been around a very long time and many CAM packages have post processors which are written for it. However, mach3 is now a bit of a dinosaur and unsupported by the software company who make it, they released mach4 about 3yrs ago but it's terrible software and full of bugs.

This next bit gets a little technical and deep but I'll try to keep it brief but still bare with me all will become clear.!!
When mach3 was first released over 25yrs ago the only real and affordable way to control a machine at the hobby level was using the parallel port (PP) of a PC as the motion control device.
But as the times moved on and PCs got faster and electronics cheaper the PP which was relatively limited in the frequency it could output , which in turn limited the speed and smoothness of the machine it started to be replaced or bypassed with external motion control devices. This was basically a much faster external to the PC "box of tricks" which transformed the machine and was supplied by various hardware companies.

Now in order for mach3 to talk these box of tricks from various suppliers, each manufacture had to supply a piece of software called a "plug-in". However, this could and often did prove troublesome because with each version or update of mach3 it could easily cause incompatibility issues with the plug-in which made the "box of tricks" useless because mach3 would no longer talk to it so then the box of tricks manufacturer would have to update the plug-in and on it went. As you can imagine this quickly become a nightmare for the box of tricks manufacturers.
The company CNCDRIVE that designed UCCNC where one of the companies that made the box of tricks for mach3 and they decided they had enough of this constant crippling and rewriting plug-ins and decided to write their own software so UCCNC was born. However, they didn't want to abandon all customers who bought their "box of tricks" so they made them capable of using both Mach3 OR UCCNC which is why any code that was written or post-processed for mach3 will work with UCCNC.

Now, Mach3 is no longer supported and hasn't been for many years and because UCCNC is still supported and produced by the "box of tricks" manufacturer it has developed into a far superior piece of software to Mach3 or even its replacement mach4, which by the way is dreadful software that is full of bugs best avoided.
This combination of UCCNC and "box of tricks" is what I now fit on all my machines and why Ben is using a Mach3 post-processor in F360.