Hello all, I am playing around with the rotary setup for square tubing. I am using version 6.1.8 and the plasmarotary mach3 post. The simulation looks good but the gcode has some odd feedrates during “A” axis moves. Rotary feedrates range from 130 (which is what my tool is set at) to 557 if the unit per rev in the post is 1, if I set it to 360 like in the turorial video the feedrate goes to 29700?
I am using inches, not MM.The tutorial video indicates set up mach3 rotary as linear, but would not the units per revolution change depending on the size of the tube if it is set up as linear axis? A 2" square tube would be 8" per rev and a 4" square tube would be 16" per rev.In the tutorial video it is set up as 360? That would seem to me to be degrees. What am I missing?
Thanks
Dan
The rotary axis needs to be set at some convenient number of units per revolution. For instance 360 units/rev (each unit is one degree). In my testing 1 unit per rev seems to work a little more smoothly than 360/rev though I don’t know why that should be.
You need to then edit your post and make sure unitsPerRev is set to the number of units per rev.
The feed rates will be all sorts of strange values as the post compensates for the effective radius of the tube at any given point. The effective radius of a square tube varies depending on it’s angle. If you are exactly in line with a corner the radius is bigger then it is if you are in line with the flat side. The final feed rate is scaled by this radius and the cut angle. If you are cutting around the circumference the feed rate is in unitsPerRev per min and if you are cutting along the length of the tube the feed rate is in mm/min or inches/min. At any other angles the feed is a combination of the two. Confused yet? It took me a while to get the math right for this!
Think I have got it. So my test rig, uses 20000 pulses to go one revolution (200 step motor x10 micro steps thru a 10 to 1 gear box) So in my steps per in mach3 I put 20000 and then in the sheetcam post I can just enter 1 in units per rev. Correct?