First test gear today

[ArtF]

Richard:

There is no best.. metric or inch, I prefer metric, others prfer inch.

(I gotta go track down that G43H5, shouldnt be there. It wont hurt you, it
just sets a tool length offset, but unless your expecting it it probably shouldnt
be used.

It sounds liek your started and on your way, yell as you get confused as
you go. Its not unusual for a machine to revert to metric on startup, but usually
theres a setting somewhere to make it start in one or the other mode.

Art

[ArtF]

Richard:

  Sorry about the G43, its removed in future versions , there is a file named
defaultmill.pst which controls output of Gcode and allows a user to change the
way code is put out, I put an example in it for someone of G43 commands,
and it got into the release inadvertantly. This is called postprocessing and is an
advanced cnc topic, not something you need to worry about. As of next
version that G43 will no longer show up by default.

  Other than that your file  looks good, your on your way..
Art

[Rocket]

Art help...

Made a gear in gearotic...2 files attached.

Thought is did everything right (see attachments)

The photo is the mess that came out of Carbide Motion.

What is wrong???

Attatchments 2 files
one photo

Thanks RR............

[ArtF]

RR:

  Your gear and file are good, so your fine to there, BUT.. Im thinkiing your machine cannot handle F100, 100" per minute may be too fast for it, it looks as
if your steppers are stalling. Chane all the F50's and F100's to F10 and see what happens, then raisse it to see where it screws up and starts wandering again.
  The result looks very much like a machine stalling on its steppers.

  If you purposely zero in the air, so it doesnt cut the wood, does it appear to follow the path? Does it only go wandering while in the wood? Focus
on the machine, the command file looks good. Does this machien cut anything as of yet? Or is this your initial testing of it?

Art
 

[Rocket]

Thanks Art,

I will change those as per your instr. and get back to you later today...

I owe you a huge lunch at least...!!!

RR

[Rocket]

Art,

The machine is a Shapeoko 3 brand new.  I have
cut a few sample projects that seem to work.

I have cut one gear that was good until about 70% done, then
it went nuts.

By all my online studying and reading, I am positive the machine works well.

[font=Verdana]Could you send me a Gearotic file of a gear that you know works perfectly,
so I could try it on my machine.  I have plenty of .25 inch plywood handy.[/font]

I would thing it would easily cut 1/4 pine plywood in a maybe 3 passes
I paid almost 1500 dollars for this from Shapeoko....

I would just love to see this thing work properly one time.

Maybe a gear about 5-7 inches in diameter.

[ArtF]

1/4 plywood shoudl easily cut in 1-2 passes depending on your tool diameter. But the example you showed doesnt in any way match
the command file you posted. How deep were the tests you did so far? I just posted a reply on another topic before I read this responce,
so lets look at it.

  Each Gearotic GCode file is particular to the machine, I cant just post one, I need to know tool diamter, feedrate, depth per pass ,etc,
but the file you posted had all that and looked fine.

Run the file , but zero .5" in the air so it nver cuts the wood, does it look like its cutting properly?

Art