Mach3

[Rod AshtonParticipant @rodashton53132]

For the record I am a model admirer and not a model maker. I subscribed to MEW on the back of the excellent Mach 3 primer articles. While I am not at all dissapointed with MEW generally. No similar articles have appeared since. – May I put in an appeal for another series please. Lazyturn + Wizards perhaps?

[Rod AshtonParticipant @rodashton53132]

Primer appeal

[David Clark 13Participant @davidclark13]

Hi There

When were the MACH3 articles published?

regards David

[dcostaParticipant @dcosta]

Hello David. Good morning!

Year 2008, MEW issues 138, 139, 141, 142, 147. Article title is CNC Milling with Mach 3.
Found using free MEW_Index **LINK**.

Best regards
Dias Costa

P.S.: There are new versions of ME and EiM Indexes applications.
Please check the date included in the file names before download to be sure it's newer than the one you have installed.

Edited By dcosta on 27/09/2012 11:10:03

[David Clark 13Participant @davidclark13]

Hi Dia

I thought so.

I started those articles but got so many complaints I stopped doing them.

I don't have a CNC mill now.

I will talk to Mick Knights.

He has one and writes articles.

regards David

[VersabossParticipant @versaboss]

Oh no, not another Mick K. please!!!

Greetings, Hansrudolf

[David Clark 13Participant @davidclark13]

Hi Hansrudolf

Whjat is wrong with Mick Knights articles?

regards David

[Michael Cox 1Participant @michaelcox1]

David,

The US Homeshopmachinist website is split into various sections. There is on for general machining, one for welding , one for digital machining (i.e. CNC) and others.

I suspect that the US readership of Home Shop Machinist is very similar to MEW here. It is interesting to compare the numbers that view the general machining section with those that view the digital machinist section. In my experience there are typically less than 10 persons viewing the digital machinist section compared with typically 300+ persons viewing the general machining section. This means that there is at least thirty more times the interest in general machining compared with digital machining.

Whilst I am not against the odd article appearing in MEW on CNC I would not want to see long series of articles, especially if they contain pages of code, appearing. Most amateurs do not have CNC machines (yet) and such articles are bound to be of limited interest. I think most people would appreciate the occaisional article explaining the potential and capabilities of CNC machining in order to keep abreast of current technology but without getting into long detailed explanations on programming.

With time I am sure that more and more CNC machines will become available to amateurs and then perhaps the content of MEW can change to reflect this but at the moment it is too early.

What about a poll on this website to determine interest? If you did this I suggest you ask two questions. Firstly " Do you want short articles on developments in CNC machining" and secondly "Do you want detailed articles on CNC machining and programming".

Mike

[Paul BoscottParticipant @paulboscott25817]

Because of those articles I an now running Mach3 on my mill and am very pleased with the result

[Rod AshtonParticipant @rodashton53132]

Thanks Paul. Looks like this needs support from us "screengazers"?

I too initiated my CNC machining through those articles.

There are many published MEW articles that are not of specific interest to me. I dont need the "back to basics" series. But applaud it`s inclusion.

I would not dream of condeming an article because it did not fit into my personal profile. I am sure there is term for this, but I am reluctant to type it.

[Clive HartlandParticipant @clivehartland94829]

I would think the best way to do this is as a supplement to the magazine, if you dont want to read it bung it, but those that need the support will no doubt keep it.

A few pages will not break the Bank but please those who want it.

Clive

[Another JohnSParticipant @anotherjohns]

Interesting.

I am really not in favour of long articles with screen shots of specific commercial applications, whether CNC or not.

I guess that I personally like to read things that make me think, so that I can apply the meaning of the article to my own goals.

Yes, I now have CNC capabilities in my own shop. Yes, I have found that "rapid moves" always seem to take a trajectory such that the tool catches on clamps or the work, breaking said tool and/or damaging the material in the vice.

But, I'm one who learns by putting my hands to it, I realize that fortunately, there are many types who make up this world.

Another JohnS.

[John McNamaraParticipant @johnmcnamara74883]

Hi All

This weekend I will be showing a CNC router made from Laser cut 5mm steel with almost no welding, at the Melbourne Model Engineering Exhibition. The machine will be driven by Mach 3 when it is completed.

It was designed using Autocad a commercial program however there are many free CAD packages that can generate DXF files to give to a laser cutting service.

Almost No Welding? The design uses a joint of my own (well I have never seen it before) A design that is effectively (two) mortise and tenon pairs together with standard fasteners between the pairs, to make each connection) ; in this case M5 high tensile nuts and bolts, to join the various members together. Using this method there are zero sheer forces on the fastenings only tension forces. I believe it could easily be scaled up to at least 12mm plate. Laser cutting has very little undercut; however there is some….. to counter this make sure the attached plates are interlocked in sets of 3 opposed at 90 degrees. Buy doing this using my best More and Wright square to test the joints I could see no light. bolt holes aligned so perfectly that there was no eye observable misalignment. There are no tapped holes in the plates. The bolts and nuts fit in slots you can see the slots in the views.

If you are wondering the only welds are the end plates of the 75mm sq tube rail supports, We are going to make a new machine with joined 5mm plate instead of these tubes. It will be more accurate and lessen the packing we needed to set the rails true on the RHS (we used a surface plate).

Laser cutting is now a fairly competitive area and the group was able to negotiate a reasonable cost for the work roughly steel cost plus steel cost x 2 for labour. The parts came back accurate to .01mm accuracy. we allowed on top of that .1mm (point one) clearance for the joints and no allowance for holes.

When the parts came back form the cutting service there were small (tiny) dags here and there. about 2 hours work total with small file to clean all the joints and it went together like a clock. No welding distortion…… We redrilled all the round 5mm holes to clean them out as they were already laser cut it only took a few seconds per hole. the holes were positioned far better than I can do with a centre punch. Yes the machine could have been made by hand methods but have a look at the parts photo. how many hundred man hours. I have spent a fair number of hours just turning all the rotating parts .

The machine also uses Chinese round shaft linear rails and a z axis ball screw. You will be amazed how the cost of these have fallen on EBay and the like. X and y drives are 5mm timing belt.

All the rotating parts use flanged ball bearings 8mm and 12mm again the internet provided a source VXB Bearings were very helpful and are a good starting point. The flange is clamped between the frame and a laser cut plate with 4 M4 bolts

I have uploaded five CAD file images into an album at this site: 2 examples below.

The carriage is now completed and next week a stand will be constructed. Next week I will upload a set of photos.

The design is a collaboration with a great friend Leo S and The Bright Men's shed group, Bright is a central Victorian country town. A Men's Shed is a community supported building equipped with various metalworking, welding and wood working machinery; members pay a nominal fee to pay for tea and coffee. and are free to use the equipment (after doing OH&S induction and training).

New technology to me definitely has a part in model engineering.

Cheers

John

Edited By John McNamara on 27/09/2012 15:17:14

[John Stevenson 1Participant @johnstevenson1]

Posted by Michael Cox 1 on 27/09/2012 13:05:37:

David,

The US Homeshopmachinist website is split into various sections. There is on for general machining, one for welding , one for digital machining (i.e. CNC) and others.

I suspect that the US readership of Home Shop Machinist is very similar to MEW here. It is interesting to compare the numbers that view the general machining section with those that view the digital machinist section. In my experience there are typically less than 10 persons viewing the digital machinist section compared with typically 300+ persons viewing the general machining section. This means that there is at least thirty more times the interest in general machining compared with digital machining.

Mike

Thats just one forum, but lets put it in perspective.

On CNC Zone, todays stats state there have been 387 posts so for in the last 24 hours.

They have 225,961 members who have started 148,112 different threads containing 1,137,711 different posts.

John S.

[KWILParticipant @kwil]

Then surely that (ie CNC Zone) is where the detailed articles should be?

[John Stevenson 1Participant @johnstevenson1]

They probably are but the site is a mine field, there are that many groups and sub groups you just get lost.

In some ways it's become a victim of it's own sucess but I feel that because of the vastness it drives people away. better laid out [ don't ask me how ] it would probably attract far more users than it does at present.

Whatever way you look at it CNC has probably got a far greater following than the current crop of model engineers and home shop machinists.

John S.

[Michael Cox 1Participant @michaelcox1]

John,

I accept that there are some sites with a bias toward CNC machining such as CNC zone. They have many posts because there are relatively few sites with a CNC bias. But even on CNC zone a great many of the posts are not actually about CNC and few post relate to programming as such. Indeed many of the most read articles, like those relating to epoxy granite concrete and climate change, have nothing to do with CNC machining at all.

However, I believe MEW, like Home Shop Machinist in the US, is largely read by amateur machinists making one off components for their projects and that very few of them have CNC machines. I am not saying no CNC articles, but don't go overboard and just keep the magazine content in line wiith the readers interests.

Mike

[mike mcdermidParticipant @mikemcdermid41977]

Posted by John McNamara on 27/09/2012 14:55:21:

Hi All

This weekend I will be showing a CNC router made from Laser cut 5mm steel with almost no welding, at the Melbourne Model Engineering Exhibition. The machine will be driven by Mach 3 when it is completed.

It was designed using Autocad a commercial program however there are many free CAD packages that can generate DXF files to give to a laser cutting service.

Almost No Welding? The design uses a joint of my own (well I have never seen it before) A design that is effectively (two) mortise and tenon pairs together with standard fasteners between the pairs, to make each connection) ; in this case M5 high tensile nuts and bolts, to join the various members together. Using this method there are zero sheer forces on the fastenings only tension forces. I believe it could easily be scaled up to at least 12mm plate. Laser cutting has very little undercut; however there is some….. to counter this make sure the attached plates are interlocked in sets of 3 opposed at 90 degrees. Buy doing this using my best More and Wright square to test the joints I could see no light. bolt holes aligned so perfectly that there was no eye observable misalignment. There are no tapped holes in the plates. The bolts and nuts fit in slots you can see the slots in the views.

If you are wondering the only welds are the end plates of the 75mm sq tube rail supports, We are going to make a new machine with joined 5mm plate instead of these tubes. It will be more accurate and lessen the packing we needed to set the rails true on the RHS (we used a surface plate).

Laser cutting is now a fairly competitive area and the group was able to negotiate a reasonable cost for the work roughly steel cost plus steel cost x 2 for labour. The parts came back accurate to .01mm accuracy. we allowed on top of that .1mm (point one) clearance for the joints and no allowance for holes.

When the parts came back form the cutting service there were small (tiny) dags here and there. about 2 hours work total with small file to clean all the joints and it went together like a clock. No welding distortion…… We redrilled all the round 5mm holes to clean them out as they were already laser cut it only took a few seconds per hole. the holes were positioned far better than I can do with a centre punch. Yes the machine could have been made by hand methods but have a look at the parts photo. how many hundred man hours. I have spent a fair number of hours just turning all the rotating parts .

The machine also uses Chinese round shaft linear rails and a z axis ball screw. You will be amazed how the cost of these have fallen on EBay and the like. X and y drives are 5mm timing belt.

All the rotating parts use flanged ball bearings 8mm and 12mm again the internet provided a source VXB Bearings were very helpful and are a good starting point. The flange is clamped between the frame and a laser cut plate with 4 M4 bolts

I have uploaded five CAD file images into an album at this site: 2 examples below.

The carriage is now completed and next week a stand will be constructed. Next week I will upload a set of photos.

The design is a collaboration with a great friend Leo S and The Bright Men's shed group, Bright is a central Victorian country town. A Men's Shed is a community supported building equipped with various metalworking, welding and wood working machinery; members pay a nominal fee to pay for tea and coffee. and are free to use the equipment (after doing OH&S induction and training).

New technology to me definitely has a part in model engineering.

Cheers

John

Edited By John McNamara on 27/09/2012 15:17:14

John I see this method of construction every day, Rolls Royce use it for very accurate very repeatable (read 1 to 5 micron) jigs and fixtures for turbine blades ,both grown and forged machined ,laser cut on a machine which even I couldnt believe would repeatably cut to the tolerances they claimed,Turns out MAZAK made the machine an example for their demonstrations and it does hold what it says on the tin

Unfortunately despite the claims of PATENTS etc in the way things are done etc it was recently pointed out to them that a company in halifax in the UK have been putting huge industrial fans together this way for the best part of 20 years

[John Stevenson 1Participant @johnstevenson1]

Michael, not saying more articles or less just that you can't take one site, then say it's a 30:1 ratio.

We have given talks in the past at exhibitions on CNC. at Ascot we filled the lecture theatre, twice a day for 2 1/2 days, and they were standing outside, The only other person to fill a theatre was the "how not to paint a loco " guy, sorry forgot his name.

We didn't drag them in, they came because they were interested. That much so that for some people building as opposed to using CNC's is now their hobby, see John Mc's interesting post above.

John S.

[blowlampParticipant @blowlamp]

Why do some people want to single out CNC and split it off from everything else?

It's just an alternative way of machining, that not only might be more feasible and easier to do than on a conventional machine, but quite possibly more enjoyable too.

Martin.

[Michael HornerParticipant @michaelhorner54327]

Some of the machines I service the frames are put together this way. Probably for at least 10 years.

Cheers Michael

[Michael GilliganParticipant @michaelgilligan61133]

Regardless of "originality" or otherwise John McNamara's design looks superb and would, I think, be ideal for an article in MEW.

The inclusion of a few concise pages about the software would be helpful, but let's not over-do that side of things. … I do have some sympathy with those who don't want to see the magazine filled with instructions for specific software … But this hardware design must surely be of interest to many.

MichaelG.

[Tony JeffreeParticipant @tonyjeffree56510]

Posted by KWIL on 27/09/2012 17:01:28:

Then surely that (ie CNC Zone) is where the detailed articles should be?

I buy MEW because it has a broad spectrum of articles in it, covering topic areas across the board in terms of home workshop tooling and machining techniques. It is probably fair to say that in any one copy of MEW, there is about 50% of the copy that isn't of particular interest. However, I have a complete collection of MEW from issue 1, and I often find myself referring back to articles that I wasn't interested in when they were first printed. If I and others had clamoured at the time for those articles (or their like) to be removed from the mag's repertoire, and we had succeeded, my reference material would have been much the poorer for it. Similarly, there is often material in an issue that isn't directly relevant to what I am doing, but is interesting because it describes a technique that I wasn't familiar with…or whatever – it is all good stuff to be filed away in the back of the brain to help solving future problems. For that reason, I live with the fact that some articles I will simply skip over, and enjoy the ones that are interesting and/or relevant.

I would be the first to agree that I couldn't imagine anything more dull than articles on CNC programming techniques with yards of program listings etc. etc. and nothing to stimulate the brain of the reader; however, by the same token, I can't imagine anything more dull than articles describing yet-another-variant-on-a-saddle-stop or similar. The acid test, for me at least, is whether an article is sufficiently interesting that readers actually go out and DO SOME ENGINEERING as a result of reading it, rather than reading the article from the comfort of their armchair and then bitching about it not being to their taste.

I've written one or two articles for the mag over the years, some "mainstream" ME stuff, some on CNC, some off-the-wall, etc. Some of them have been criticised, in this forum and in the postbag pages, for reasons ranging from "too much CNC" to "too much humour"; however, from the direct feedback I get, it is very clear to me that there are very few of my articles that were a waste of my time, i.e., that failed my acid test of whether or not any readers *actually did stuff* as a result of reading them. That, for me, makes all the difference, and is the reason I keep writing, on whatever topic is currently occupying my workshop time.

At the end of the day, it is up to the editor to make a judgement call, in order to produce a magazine with broad appeal, and select articles for publication accordingly. As David's constant pleas in the mag indicate, he is of course limited to publishing articles that people submit to him – he doesn't have a magic wand that he can wave and conjour good quality articles out of thin air. So every reader of the mag is in a position to influence the balance of articles in MEW in a very practical way – by writing good quality articles on appropriate topics and submitting them for publication. But I, for one, would seriously consider not renewing my subscription if the CNC-bashing brigade succeed in having CNC-related articles banned from the magazine – that it would result in a poorer magazine content, and would ultimately be a dis-service to its readership.

Regards,

Tony

Edited By Tony Jeffree on 27/09/2012 18:09:01

[Michael HornerParticipant @michaelhorner54327]

David

Is it feasable to have the "digital articles" on the electronic magazine only so if it gets thrown away it's not wasting them poor trees?

Cheers Michael

[Tony JeffreeParticipant @tonyjeffree56510]

Posted by Michael Gilligan on 27/09/2012 17:54:32:

Regardless of "originality" or otherwise John McNamara's design looks superb and would, I think, be ideal for an article in MEW.

I agree – it would be great to see this written up for MEW.

Regards,

Tony

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