Hi All

I'm new to the forum and would like to introduce myself.

My name is Mark and I'm from Gloucestershire, England.

A little background, I am a professional Engineering Technician who has worked in many different engineering disciplines including control systems, rotating machines, and audio among others.

My hobbies include model engineering, audio and video work and electronic construction.

I have worked for Renishaw in the past, experienced CNCers may recognize the name for their touch probes. It was here that I started to get an introduction to the basics of CNC machines. I was let loose with a brand new Cincinnati Sabre VMC on permanent loan from the manufacturers. It was used as a "test bed" for checking metrology gear and was probably the most leveled, calibrated and backlash compensated machine in history. We managed to find some backlash although almost nil as you might expect.

I also worked for a company who did some CNC retrofits on some very strange machines indeed but that's a long story for another day.

Despite this my knowledge of G Code extends to a few G0s and G1s to check the axes with one hand on the EM Stop in case we had the limits wired wrong or the spindle motor suddenly "took off" on us.

A situation I am about to remedy however. Up until now I have never owned a CNC myself but I am about to buy a fairly solid looking 3040 Router. It's a Chinese one but The chassis looks fairly solid and I can upgrade the controls, motors and spindle at a later date. It is within my (VERY) limited budget and we all have to start somewhere. It is fitted with ballscrews not ACME feedscrews though.

It will mostly be used for drilling P.C.B.s and possibly isolation routing some as well as small brass and aluminium model components.  

As long as I don't try to push it too hard I should be O.K. as soon as I can work out how to turn Excellon files into G Code.

I have tried a few converters but not a lot of luck yet. Any Ideas anyone.

I expect I will be a frequent visitor to the forum especially during the broken tools and "It's supposed to go the other way" bit (if it's anything like the "big ones")

Regards Mark

 

Hello everyone, am Vojislav from Serbia, electrician
Long time ago we had old russian copier machine , so i decide to put step motors and some spindle and make engrave machine. I make electric cabinet full of equipment later i can put some pictures so everyone can see, machine is not big , enough for jobs we need,  we had a lot of files made in tango.pcb. In that  program we can export file like dxf. Problem we have now is converting dxf to g code, i tried  several programs , and most suitable for now look program nc plot, because our files in dxf are written in 2D and for engrave we need to put depth of z axis . Main problem is with dimension , when i make nc and load it to mach3 and start , machine is working but it looks like 10 times smaller than in project, searching on forum i didnt find topic about this so if anyone can help me i wil appreciate it.

Hi Guys,

Welcome to the forum.

Any questions you may have are best posted as a New Topic in the general section. That way they will receive the maximum coverage from our hive mind. 

Tweakie.

Thanks Tweakie

I like Super Kitty BTW very cute but I'm biased,  I'm cats mad as well. Amazing creatures

Hi everyone.  I'm new to CNC and just got my first machine.  I decided to get one of the 3040 machines off Ebay, so with fingers crossed, hoping to have a good experience at least on a novice level.  I have been designing, and re-engineering machines for many years, but any experience up until now in machining has always been manual.
Anyway, glad to be here, and excited to get started 

Hi Dwrightny2266

I'm in pretty much the same position hoping to get a 3040 in the next few weeks.

So welcome to the forum, they are a friendly bunch, and a goldmine of info for us newbies so we will have plenty of support in the early stages.

I have been told here that you can set one up to work just like a manual machine but with power feeds and DROs on all the axes so the transition shouldn't be too painful.

Regards Mark

G'day everyone.

I've just joined up here and been reading through lots of posts.

I'm in the finishing stages of building a medium size 3 axis router with just a few tweaks to go with the Mach3 software I switched to after the last control boards and software I found totally lacking.

I live in Cairns Australia and build custom ukuleles and parlour guitars from my workshop just a couple of meters from my back door.

Hi, I am in the UK and very new to the world of CNC routing and MACH3, a nurse by background who is now looking to start a new venture, carving / cutting Vinyl Records to create  clocks. I purchased a 3040 from Ebay2 weks ago
I am haveing issues tryng to generate g codes ?? from designs and pictures.

I look forward to tips andsupport that can be offered

Hello every one,
My name is Joe and I am a machinist. After being employed in a few different shops for the past 32 years I am finally getting my own
shop together. About a year ago I purchased an old Bridgeport, it is in very nice condition now, so I decided to do a CNC upgrade to it.
I purchased a ClearPath servo motor and downloaded Mach3 on a  windows 7 pc. The installation went pretty smooth and everything seems to be working except one very important thing. I am not able to get any motion from the x axis motor.
If anyone has any input on this it would be very much appreciated.
Thanks,
Joe.

Hi My name is Ricardo,

I`m from Johannesburg south Africa , just got myself a ruijle cnc router the bed size is 3 x 2 meters and i am looking for some new projects if anyone is familiar with this machine and can send me 1 or 2 projects to get me started it would be highly appreciated. my e-mail is ricardoagrella3@gmail.com.