In this video
we're going to take a look at the screens.
And this will just a a general over view of the screens
just so that people are a little bit more comfortable
with all the controls that are on them.
I get a lot on comments about complexity of the screens
but they're really not overly complex
and they follow a general rule of
if you don't know what it is
don't click it, don't use it.
Eventually you'll come to an eureka moment
where you say ahh
that's what that control was for.
That's a natural progression in using any program
and especially so in MACH 3.
So lets take a look at the screens pay attention
when I use certain terminology.
Um, it saves a lot of support time,
If you send me an email
saying the number thingy on X isn't displaying properly
it's just going to cause an email
to come back to you saying do you mean the DRO?
You'll see a lot of people on the group
correcting people's terminology at times.
They're not doing it to be mean they're actually doing it because
it's a lot easier to convey information between us all
if we use a standardized terminology at least.
That having been said,
lets take a look at the screens.
Here we are on the program run screen.
There are 6 screens across the top
you can see we have program run
which is where we are.
We have an MDI or Manual Data Input screen.
We have a Toolpath screen
which is good for looking at whatever Toolpath you have loaded
and seeing what its program limits
and so on are.
We have an Offset screen
which you can use to
set your offset systems.
Here you can see we can switch from G 54 to G 55 and G 56.
You'll notice that the buttons do nothing
many times
unless we rest condition.
When we're reset suddenly things began to work.
The control internally does not like to do many things
if it's not in a safe condition.
Switching coordinates systems is one of them.
We'll go into this later
so that you understand what those all are.
We have a setting screen
which is a bit messy and the last screen to be cleaned up.
It has special items on it
for specific types of uses
tangential knife control,
we have feed rate controls and CV controls for plasma tables
and various controls some of these
will go away very shortly
and other will be just a simply cleaned up.
We have the Diagnostic screen
which everyone is familiar with from the previous
videos.
This is probably the most important section up here
that shows you the LEDs that you have.
Um,LEDs represent the signals that you have connected to the system.
You can see that they're all out on mine
and they should be.
If I press a home switch
you'll see that the home light switch comes on
and if I release the home switch it goes out.
That's the normal operation on these LEDs
typically you'll have none of these on
when the signals are not active
and the program's in a normal run time state.
Normally the only thing you'll see flashing around
when you're not moving is this time in interrupt DRO
which shows the number of micro seconds that the driver
is currently spending on each
interaction through its interrupt cycle.
I don't expect many of you to understand what I just said.
Just take it from me that this number should
be flashing and it's quite normal.
It should be less than 15 on all systems
and you can see mine flashes between
about 6 micro seconds and 4 micro seconds,
depending on how much house keeping needs to be done
at that particular interrupt.
Lets go back to our program run screen.
This box here is the G code display box,
you can see that if we load a um,
a G code file.
I'm just gonna go to the MACH 3 folder into my G code
there's examples.
There's the famous Roadrunner file that I always use as an example
and you can see that the file is listed
here in the G code display window.
By clicking into the window
we can scroll with our mouse wheel
one line at a time,
through the program.
And you'll see over here
we have a white dot
that represents this single line of G code
and as I scroll you can see
the white dot moving.
Sometimes it'll disappear and this usually is
because it's to small to display on that particular line.
But this is a handy feature for scrolling back through
and finding a troublesome spot on your code.
Clicking once again will take you out of focus for that window.
The Toolpath window itself
double clicking
will reset it to a plain
and reset it to a size.
The red box going around our Toolpath
is simply the extrema of the file
these are the
the program is tell you
this is the highest Y value you have,
the lowest Y value,
the minimum X,
and the maximum X values.
We can take a closer look at that Toolpath
by going into the Toolpath window.
Now you can see once I've clicked in the window
if I rotate my mouse I'm zooming in with my mouse wheel
and zooming out.
Double clicking resets us.
You can see the dash lines are rapid moves
between cutting segments.
The dark blue lines are actual G 1 feed lines
and if there were light blue lines here those would be G 2 or G 3 arcs.
You can rotate it by clicking in it and rotating around
again if you get lost double click and you're back to normal.
If you hold down the shift key
and move your mouse back and forth
you can slowly zoom in and out on the picture.
And by clicking down your right mouse button
and moving the mouse you can pan it around
and those can be combined
you can zoom in and pan on the zoom.
We also have a mode called jog follow,
which resets the drawing so that you can jog it around
and actually see where you are going
from the jog.
I'm going to switch us to
a normal jog mode here.
Now when ever you zero DROs
these are the DROs by the way,
digital read outs,
this yellow line, two yellow lines
shows the X and the Y axes intersecting.
So at this moment my tool is centered
somewhere up around this roadrunners foot.
If I jog my axis you can see that the drawing
moves to show where the tool is currently at
when I'm in jog follow mode.
If I turn off jog follow mode
the lines move to show you where you would be
again double clicking will reset the system.
If you zero DROs
you could just see that those lines moved to the zero point
or the origin point of this piece.
It's important though
when ever you zero DROs
that you do a Regen of the Toolpath
so that the system recoordinates the Toolpath display
with actual coordinate positions.
When you're running a file
here we have a cycle start button,
when you're running a file
it will draw in green and show you as it cuts that particular path.
Clicking once on the image at any time
will clear away that green line
so that you can see
a little bit clearer in case it's obscuring your view.
We have a feed hold button,
which as you can see stop the movement
showed us what the next line is
and from there we can hit cycle start
and continue.
Or once feed held
we could for example, hit reverse
and the program beings to run backwards.
Hitting feed hold will turn off the reverse mode,
hitting cycle start will go forward again.
Reverse is handy for plasma people,
it's not real handy for mill
although it is used by some.
Stop of course, stops the program;
stop will stop a program,
hitting the escape button will stop a program,
and hitting reset will stop a program.
We also have an edit G code button,
which will bring up an editor,
so that we can edit and change anything
in the code that we wish.
Closing the editor
will automatically reload the file
and display any changes that you've made.
We can close a G code file with this button.
We can load G code files with this button
but we have a recent file button
which will give us a list of the last 10 files that we've used.
We have a rewind button
which rewinds the G code.
Single block puts us into a mode
where pushing cycle start will execute one line at a time.
Turning off single block we could then continue the cut from there.
We'll hit stop and rewind.
We have a set next line button.
You'll notice if I scroll through this it tells me which line I'm on.
I could either say set next line,
in which case the program counters have all been set to this line
and pushing start will simply start moving from that point.
That is not really a safe way to start a G code file in the middle.
The safest way to start a G code file in the middle
is to scroll your G code down to the line that you wish to start from
and clicking run from here.
This will force the program to run the file internally to that line
in order to set all previous states to the correct position.
You'll see we get a message
press cycle start for preparation move.
If we push cycle start it will tell us
where that line in the program is
and it knows we're not there
and it will then go to that position
and we're ready for a cycle start.
We have a Tool Information line
which shows us what are current tool number is
diameter,
length of the tool.
This light change tool will be flashing when the system
is telling us to change our tool and we'll get a message down here
asking us to press cycle start
when we have changed our tool.
We can turn jog on or off.
This button probably doesn't belong in the tool information
but it was a nice spot to put it
and it was empty there anyway.
We have an off line mode
which stops any output from going to our motors
in case we want to run a simulation
and we don't want our motors to move.
We have a go to Zed button
which means go to zeros,
pressing this button tells all our axes
to go to the zero point.
We have a machine coordinates button
which when pressed will show us our machine coordinates
of the current positon
verses our work coordinates.
The next video will go into explaining
the difference between the two.
We have a Soft Limits button that we can turn on,
as long as our axis is currently within the
width and height of the soft limits we have set.
Again this will be the subject in the next video as well.
Here we have scale values
that we can scale in access if we were to
for example .5 in the X scale
We get a warning that the X is now scaled.
Hitting regen toolpath we can see it's now scaled to .5 of what it was.
Setting this back to 1 will turn off our scale warning
and regening we can see we are now back to a full file.
We have a feed rate selector
this is feed rate override.
We have units per minute
and units per rev
that are real time updates as your moving.
Here we have our Spindle Speed selection
we can turn a spindle on or off.
We have Spindle Speed override,
that we can override the spindle speed that was set in the G code program
and allow the spindle to speed up or slow down
pressing reset will of course bring it back to 0.
This section of the screen here is used for multipass
again you don't need to worry about it
unless you know how to use it.
Generally though if you have a G code file
which is set to a particular depth,
say its set to cut 2 - 10
you could hit MultiPass
and tell that file to cut five times
dropping two each time until it hits 10.
So it is literally a MultiPass selector
allowing you to cut a file in multiple passes.
Here we have a Wizards button which allows us to select
any of the Wizards that are in the system
and we also have a Last Wizard button
and if you have selected a Wizard in the past
during that session
it will just bring it up quickly again for you.
We have a Conversational button
which will switch us to conversational screens.
This will be the subject of a video of its own
but here we can select material
and calculate what are feeds and speeds should be
and then we can select various automatic conversational systems
to do jobs that we might not want
to go to a cam program for
or things which can be quickly done through a wizard.
Pressing exit will take us back to our normal screens.
You can see that the wizard eye
was in already started to post a program
we didn't select any real programs
so we don't get much code from it.
Hitting our recent file list
we could select our roadrunner again
and there's our famous roadrunner.
Here we'll display the file name
that we currently have loaded
and here's a Reference button
to send all our homes to 0 to our home switch.
If we press Reference you'll notice that the Y axis
is now moving up and now it hit its switch
and now the X axis is moving to it its switch
hits it and then backs off the switch.
These are simulated and you'll see that the X axis
went forward to its switch which it normally wouldn't do
I haven't set this system up for homing
we'll do that in the next video when we discuss work offsets
and general coordinates systems themselves.
We take a look at the MDI screen
again we have are DROs repeated.
It's handy to have DROs on most of the screens
so you know exactly where your table is at.
We have 0 buttons for zeroing the axes
and another Reference button here to scaling
Radius correction is used for axis work
where you can tell the system the actual circumference
size of the object and it will correct feed rate
to create a Toolpath that feeds at the correct rate
on the circumference of a rotating object.
Again something that you can ignore unless
you understand what they're for.
We have Dereference all axes
where we can tell the system
that we're no longer homed.
These LEDs turn green when we are homed.
Off line again Machine Coordinate
and we have a verify button.
The verify button is used
if you want to check to see if you lost any steps
in your running of various programs
it will send the axes back to your home switch
and then bring them back to where you were
when you pressed verify
and report to you when you lost steps.
Scaling off button will turn off any scalings that are in effect.
If we had a scale of .5 on our X
and we want to get rid of it
we could just press off.
We have a Stop button,
we have a Start Teach and a Stop Teach button.
These are Teach modes with MDI.
You can actually write a program
and type in the commands as you go.
The Teach will remember any commands
which were typed here into the MDI
and create a G code program from what you typed.
We have a set variable position
if we go to a particular position
we can say set that as a variable position
and later on in our program if we're somewhere else
we could say go to variable position
and it will return there.
Think of this memory plus on a calculator
and memory recall.
We've duplicated the feed rate
and the spindle speed controls here
and the jog on and jog off controls for safety sake
in case you don't,
you want to make sure you don't hit an arrow key
and destroy your work while you're playing around.
The input line here for MDI records your commands as you type them.
If we do a G0X0Y0 for example,
you can see my axes just moved to 0
and this little box here is a history box
which now displays that command.
If we type G0X10
the history box has just grown by 1
and by pressing the up or down arrows
we can scroll threw those settings
and recall them.
Pressing enter takes any command
and pressing enter on a blank line
will exit you from the MBI input.
Also pressing enter while you don't have the line selected
will select the line and take it off.
This is the Toolpath screen here we have DROs
just to show you where you are.
We have program limits that show you the range of the program
so your minimum X would be this point here is 0
your max is 7.72 which would be this point here.
We have a Regen Toolpath button
which regenerates the Toolpath.
These are buttons duplicated from the front page
you can rewind a file,
single block it,
reverse run it,
stop it,
or feed hold it.
You can also estimate a program by hitting simulate program run.
No motor movement will occure
and you can see the DROs are not moving
but the time is counting very quickly up to show you
how long this job will take to cut at its current feed rate settings.
It takes approximately a minute for every 10 minutes of program run simulation.
So if you have a multi hour job, this could take a little while
to figure out exactly how long it's gonna take.
But it can be useful
for calculating an estimate for a customer who wants to know
how many hours of time it's going to take to simulate his
or to cut his actual job.
So this program will take 3 minutes and 56 seconds
to cut at its current feed rate setting.
Now we have a Run from here button
so that you can start the program from any point in it.
We have an offsets page.
This particular section here is used for setting a gage block height.
Um, it means you can put a block on top of your machine
jog down to it
and then set you zed coordinate to accuracy
without the risk of the tip of your bits
scratching your piece
and this is used by a lot of people
as a safe way of setting their tool height.
We have a current work offset,
which shows us what the offset is in various modes
but primarily it shows what the current
work offset is in the mode we have selected.
Normally you will be set to G 54
until you've gained a certain amount of expertise
and then your free to select any of the offset systems.
There are in fact 255 of these systems
but we've given quick access to the first 6.
Most people I don't think will ever need
more then the first 6 that they have.
Here we have an edge finder selection,
this can be used
and is useful for finding the center of a circle
or finding the edge of material.
This is a duplication of the Gage Block Height
with a few other help systems on it
these help menus will soon become active.
We can turn on or off the tool offset as well
as long as were not in tool zero
which has, which never has an offset in it.
These buttons here will allow you to bring up a dialogue
to see what is stored in your work offset systems.
Here you can see G54 through G59
and we also have G59p7 through G59p253.
So there is a lot of offset systems that you can use.
We also have a tool table,
which will show us what is stored
for each entry in the tool table
and again we wont get into that until we've gone through
showing you exactly what tool tables are and how to use them.
The Setting Screen
which will change very shortly,
is used for special jobs like turning on lasers triggers
to trigger measurement lasers
across a grid of X, Y coordinates.
We can set a rapid override
which slows down or speeds up are rapids .
We can tell the system that when input number 4
is coming into the printer port
to do a single step whenever it sees a toggle.
Various settings and you should need to use none of these as a beginning user.
These are all fairly advanced settings
and really aren't necessary for most people.
The diagnostic screen has a couple things that are important
one is the pulse frequency.
If your system is running properly you should have a pulse frequency here.
You can see that mine is dead locked at 25,690
this should not vary much
it is a sign of a well operating system
that this number doesn't change
and doesn't fly around.
It won't affect you if it flies around a little bit
say 10 or so
but typically it should be fairly well locked.
Most of the other settings on this screen
are not very important to you at all other then these LEDs.
Then we have a tab screen
which is pulled out by pressing the tab key
and these are the jog selections in the system.
I'm gonna flick back to
the program run screens that we get a better view.
You can see that the jog buttons
will jog the axes with an onscreen jog.
We have a slow jog rate
which we have set to 50% at the moment.
Slow jog is what you get when you just simply
press the arrow keys.
If you look here you can see my units per minute
when I jog it's currently 321mm per minute,
but if I press that's a 50% rate.
If I press the shift key and when I press shift you'll see
this LED light up here on the panel.
That's an indicator that you are now going to fast jog.
So by pressing the shift key
and pressing the X jog
you can see that we've gone now to 642 units per minute,
double the speed that we were.
This slow jog rate can be used to get vary fine movement control
from your arrow keys,
when you want to slow things down for very fine approaches.
Pressing shift will take you to a high speed move
so that you can move quickly away or two a piece.
For jog modes we can also switch to a step mode
which means every press of the arrow key
will move us this amount here .01mm
and you can see my X axes as I press the key is now
each time I press it moving .01.
The cycle step can be cycled through
now we've cycled it up to .1
and now each time I jog it will move .1.
And you can set these cycle jogs... steps
in the Configure State menu.
Here are the ones we are cycling through
when we press this Cycle Jog Step button.
You'll see an entry here 999,
999 triggers the system to switch back to continues jog
it's a way to get back to continues jog just by cycling through.
We have an MPG mode
and in the MPG mode ,
when you rotate your MPG wheel
you will jog in one of four various types of jog.
By selecting velocity
the faster you turn the jog wheel
the faster your access will jog.
By step velocity at the moment is the same as velocity only it is a redundant
mode and no longer required. But I'm going to leave it there for the moment
we'll fill it with a better mode soon.
Single step mode
will move you one single step
whenever you rotate the wheel a small amount
you must stop between steps to get single step to work.
Multi-step you don't need to stop
you can calibrate your MPG wheel,
rotate it 5 clicks
and the axes will move
an appropriate amount with 5 clicks of movement.
This percentage reading here is not used at the moment
it is part of the old step velocity mode
which will again be replaced.
There's a Calibrating button here
to calibrate your MPG
to tell the system how many encoder counts it will get
per detent of the wheel
and so on, and it'll calculate things out
to make it work smoother for you.
There's a shuttle mode which can be turned on.
Shuttle mode runs a program by rotating the wheel.
In shuttle mode
we can tell a program to start
and as you can see it will not move
and it's waiting for us to rotate the wheel.
If we were to then rotate the hand wheel
8, the program will then move slowly
as you can see as I stop turning my MPG
the DROs stop moving.
If I get rid of that we can see
the program is now moving
and you notice it is cutting in the wrong place.
That's because we did not regen the toolpath
after all our playing here and zeroing.
So it's important,
I'm gonna stop this again
regenerate the toolpath after you've been zeroing.
I can now tell the program to start
and again it's not moving
because I'm not moving my MPG
as I rotate my MPG now the program
as you can see follows through
and cuts only at the speed that I rotate my wheel at.
This is a very handy mode for those who are nervouse
and want to run a program very slowly
and a little bit at a time.
And that's what shuttle mode does.
Once I turn off shuttle mode
you can see the program begins to run automatically
and will finish itself out
unless I tell it to stop.
That's about it for the buttons that are on the MPG
and Jog tab.
That's about it for all the buttons in the system really
and all that you need to know to get started.
In the next video we're going to take a look at
work offset and offset systems
to get you more use to that.
And that's it for now.