I wonder if anyone else is using HEIZ machines with Mach3.

I'd like to hear their experiences with settings, acceleration, velocity, etc. I have HEIZ CNC-STEP High-Z S-1000/T, and am very satisifed with it, so far.

Basically, I've been playing with it in "safe mode" (very very slow settings), and now I'm trying to increase the XYZ speeds, in order to reduce carving times.

Since machine, supposedly, can reach very high speeds (they're mentioning 7m/min, but I'm not going to try anything even close to it ), I wonder what speeds people use with it? I am currently having velocity (for X and Y) at 2400, and acceleration at 100, and motors sound just fine (to my newbie ears ). (I am using metric system, btw, so velocity is in mm)

Although feed rates are defined within G-Code, it is my understanding that time required for spindle to move between places during milling job is what can slow down or speed up milling job considerably.

Or maybe someone else has similar machine, and could give me experiences with different speeds?

Thanks.

(EDIT: typo, not 7m/sec, 7m/min )

Hello Sentinel,

Have you gotten any further with your machine? I just got my S-1000 last week and am trying to get it up and running. I got WinPCNC with it (and finally got the whole thing set up and running after a week's work) but the Mach3 looks like it may be better. Was it difficult to set up the Mach3?

What are you using for CAM? I tried the demo version of Filou but I'm having difficulties with it. On the first PC I installed it on it decided the next day that the 30 day trial period was over (even when I set the clock back). On my other machine I get crashes and video garbage in the simulation window.

Thanks.

HIGH-Z Help Please. I am a High-Z S-400 Owner. NEED HELP... Does any one have any information on setting up the High-Z with Mach 3.  I have no experience with this and have switched over from Win PC-NC Economy after Several Dongle Computer Crashes.  Is there any one who can assist me with the Config set up. My XYZ  and Controller will not run with Mach 3. I know there is a fix for this but I am having no luck.

Thanks

Here are the settings I use for my High-Z S-1000. Once you get it up and running I would recommend that you set the backlash as well.

Some weeks ago I got my Heiz High-Z S400 mill.

Started out with the WinPC-NC Lite I received with the machine, but it is very limited in functionality 
Tried out EMC2 (very stable) but limited when it comes to everything beyond G-code.
Mach3 is not as stable as EMC2 (maybe it's a Windows XP problem) but it has a lot of the functionality I will be needing.

I have attached the Mach3 settings for S-400.
Everything is stable except the EStop signal from the controller - it generates random EStop and I haven't figured out if it is noise or some other problem...

If anyone have experienced problems with EStop (and solved them) let me know...

I am looking at getting a heiz zs 1000 and running it with mach 3, however after reading your post and similar posts on mycncuk and looking at your settings having dowloaded and read through part of the mach3 manual pdf which you can download off this site, I have to wonder.  No mistakes I am a novice but looks to me as though you may have some pin settings wrong, most microcontrollers like to use an active low signal for the motor outputs and this is recommended by mach3, the direction pins can be also be set low active and if the direction is wrong you use the homing page in config to reverse an axis, this is supposedly better for the controller.    Next if you go to control panel and double click system and hit hardware devices and go to your port and double click your parrallel port usually there is a check box  where you can stipulate to ignore interups, probably best to check ingnore interupts not associated with this device.  There should also be a mach 3 clock emulator in device manager if not it hasn't installed properly and you didn't reboot after installation of mach 3.  If you go then to c drive open windows, program files, mach3 folderthere should be a program called mach test, right click and create a shortcut and drag it onto your desktop.   With mach3 closed start mach test, a window will pop up to show your clock timing generated by mach for the stepper motor control, you get an initial spike and small fuzzy line none of the sike should be more than 1/4 inch on 1024/768 resolution screen if it is then something is interupting the clock cycle i.e LAN, internet connection (set to 100kbps).   Also on the motor tunning tab you dont have any timing sequences set on timing pulses, next to G'ss should be 5 and 5 us so the controller can pick up the signal.  I would suggest giving phil a ring at prototools in Ireland he seems very helpful to verify these changes before you try them.   This is just the bit and bobs I have picked up off the mach manual, let me know how you got on as I know this post was ages ago?  Hope it all works for you
Nick

Thanks for the info Nick! I'll go over my setup again, this should be a help!

I would seriously recommend that you get the High-Z S-100/T model which has the recirculating ball drive spindles, as opposed to the regular ones. The regular model has way too much play in the spindles. Mine had 0.146 mm in the Y axis, 0.03 on the X axis and 0.01 on the Z axis after just a year and it has caused me some serious problems. Also, the T model can be driven up to 7000 mm/min where there the regular model can only go to 2000 mm/min. Otherwise I'm very happy with the machine, but I do wish I'd known about the spindles. I plan on selling my S-1000 and buying an S-1000/T as soon as I can.

Cab

I bought a S400 about 2 years ago with Win-PC. I tried to get Mach 3 to work a couple of times without sucess but thanks to your information I've now got it sorted. Its running under Windows 2000 on a fairly fast PC. I did a bit of work on the speeds but I have not tested it extensively yet.

If you are interested here are the settings that seem to work:

Hi microsteam,

I'm glad you got it working, I think you'll find Mach3 to be a lot better than Win-PC.

Cab

Hi Area 51 please check your estop pinning looks like you may have wrong pin setup, checking settings with cabella looks like I may have to revise some of mine too, didn;t realise there was a charge pump nice to know, there have been various threads I have read when I first setup I had crackling on one drive, initially I though it may be a short circuit, but decided to reconfigure parallel port to ECP mode and it cleared it up.  There was a thread where the spindle relay was causing problems for people and the option was to disanle it in mach and run of the mains but mine is working okay, another person said it was grounloop interferance between case and parallel port his solution was to withdraw port from case and insulate cabing and port connector with heatshrink.  These problems tended to be with the earlier four stepper controllers and the new ones shouldn't have this problem the setting I got were from somewhere else, but will check them as cabella has posted charge pump settings so will try these I think.  Thanks for the info!!   The faster T series can apparently do 10000 mm/min rapids I wouldn't set them that high 7000 mm/min sounds good though.  I have the s720 and am running at about 2250 mm/min rapids with 400 mm/sec ramps and it appears to work  okay at this early stage.  I am quite interested no one sets signal length durations, it is recommended to set between 3 and 10 us in motor setup, winPC recommended at 10us.   Anyhow its nice to find some other members using mach3 on their Heiz machines.  Also the relay switch was a little confusing up for manual on and down to run of mach but all in all very pleased with the machine. .  Am using cut2d and emc2 postprocessor for mach and it appears to  work okay, still need to do some tweeking will let you know how I get on
Here are the settings I was using!
Nick