Questions on using a moving gantry style mini-mill...

[lucan07]

Mine is not set up yet but Monitor on wall and keyboard mouse just below on swinging shelf or a 14" CRT tv bracket in a former life with a piece of MDF attached swings all ways including back to wall up out of way of chips. I also have the Mill sitting in a 700x700x7mm plastic garland tray from amazon catches lots of chips and fluis if necessary come in all different sizes extremely useful in workshop.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Garland-2251...ilpage_o05_s00

[Davek0974]

As a move in the right direction, i have fitted some bracketry and mounted the monitor up high out of the chip path, the brackets stem from the main table frame which is 44x44 structural aluminium, makes it easy to bolt bits on ;)

I also did a facing cut on the bed, here's a video of a bit of it...
https://youtu.be/PSkSn_s8xF8

It was with a 12mm indexable carbide tool at 21000 rpm and 2300mm/min feed, DOC was 0.15mm, just enough to get a cut off the whole face.

The results show the head is a tiny bit off-tram but until i get a decent setup for adjusting it I think it best left where it is, using a DTI it seems the slight ripples made by the tool are about 0.01mm high at the peak,not bad i think as the head was just as i bolted it on!

All things being equal, the results from now on should be 'as good as it gets' for a while at least.

[Davek0974]

Still running good, much better in fact after doing the facing cut on the bed - i think this should be the first job on any machine as it makes such a difference.

Now have Vectric software which seems pretty good. Does anyone here use it know if there is a way to enter g-code snippets into the job process list??

Things like selecting G5x Offset or adding a pause, message etc ??

[routercnc]

Don't know about inserting g-code using Vectric directly, but you can read the .txt gcode files it creates using a text editor such as 'notepad' and add the lines manually. Or you can load the code into Mach3, then there is a code editing button which opens a text editor which you can then edit.

[Davek0974]

Yeah thanks, I knew about the manual edits but I am sort of side-stepping from SheetCam to Vectric for the mill stuff and sheetcam can do code inserts easily, saves a lot of messing around when running and modifying a file repeatedly.

[Ger21]

You can edit the post.

Look in the post processor manual. There's a variable called "file notes" that you can add.
In Cut 2D or V Carve Pro, go to Edit > Notes and put your G5x there.
Then the notes will be inserted in the g-code wherever you put the "file notes".

[Davek0974]

OOH, nice ;)

Didn't notice the post manual before.

I see there is possibly a more useful one called [TOOL_NOTES] that goes with each tool used, the post wraps the message in brackets which are ignored by Mach so it will need some editing which will then render the [TOOL_NOTES] feature useless for tool notes but hay-ho you can't have it all I guess ;)

Just insert the tool_notes var into the tool change part of the post, as i want add a macro call to go to park position and then a pause to remind me to change hold-down clamps etc before changing the tool and continuing.

[Ger21]

I see there is possibly a more useful one called [TOOL_NOTES]

That depends on what you want to do.
For adding a G5x, I think the file notes are a better choice.

For the park position, add the M883 at the start of your tool change section in the post, followed by your pause.