peck drilling operation not working

[rideforlife247]

I have a premier plasma 2x2 cnc table setup for plasma and routing.

I have the router setup cutting wood.

I setup a drilling operation, it asks for peck depth and peck retract, doesn't seem to matter what I set them too, its as if they are completly ignored. (i tried 3 different times with 3 different peck settings)

I ran the post processor, ran it in mach 3, and the drill operation just goes to full drill depth, drilling .5 deep into wood

drill op setup as follows:
layer: holes
tool: t19
start depth: 0
cut depth: .25
peck depth: .032
peck retract: .032
plunge rate: 5 ipm
spindle speed: 10,000
min hole size: .1
max hole size: 1

any ideas?

[Les Newell]

What post processor are you using? It is possible the post isn't configured for peck drilling.

[rideforlife247]

oh good point, the manufacture suggested that i use the mach 3 plasma post processor

as seen here at 0:55
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j2MPUiB ... 6L&index=8

is there a way to make that post processor work or do i need to use a different post processor?

ok thanks so much

[Les Newell]

I'd recommend using the 'Mach3' post. The 'Mach3 plasma' post is not set up to handle milling/routing.

[rideforlife247]

simple enough, ill give it a try, not sure why the manufacture suggests it as it causes problems, just tried another cut with it this morning and the tabs feature didnt work either, will try the mach 3 post next time, thanks for your input!

[rideforlife247]

i did end up trying this and when i ran it, it came up with an error about belt speed too high and it wouldn't run.

so i have yet to successfully run a peck drilling operation. although i did get the tab feature to work later.

I am so lost when it comes to how did the manufacture design their product to work, what components did they use, and how did they come up with their own post processor settings that works for the machine they pieced together.

another battle was the machine would skip certain features, for example cutting 12 circles in a row, everything is the same, every circle every time, it would cut some circles and then some circles it would only go down to drill depth then it would retract and move on to the next circle. i looked at the g code for each circle and it was exactly the same. mind blowing. at the end, i would run a new sheetcam operation for the holes that it didnt complete, and then it would cut them as normal.

so much to learn about this stuff

[Les Newell]

The 'belt speed too high' error message appears when you specify a spindle speed higher than the maximum spindle speed configured in Mach3. If you reduce the spindle speed in SheetCam the error should go away.

The circles problem is a bug in Mach3. Either update to the most recent version of Mach3 or modify the post to never output full circles. To modify the post go to Options->machine->post processor and click on the 'Edit post' button. Add this as the very first line:

Code: Select all

post.SetOptions(post.ARC_SEGMENTS)

With that option enabled, circles are broken into 4 arcs.

[rideforlife247]

ok good to know on the spindle speed, ill try that next time

i looked at the post processor and it already had that post arc segments portion there

thanks for sharing you knowledge, much appreciated