[racedirector]

Hi all

I am running Mach3 with soft limits at the moment as I do no have home & limit switches yet and find a "problem" when switching between G20 & G21. If I set my machine up in imperial and run metric gcode I get soft limit warnings when starting. Is mAch supposed to refactor things like soft limits when running code opposite to the machines default?

I could run the machine in metric and load G20 based gcode but then my soft limits wouldn't work (except maybe zero) so I was hoping there is a "switch" somewhere that I haven't seen yet that tells Mach to adjust all measurements and settings when running a particular sort of gcode.... is there anything like that?

If there is nothing then I suppose until I get my switches in place it would be easier to run 2 different profiles, one for metric based gcode and one for imperial based gcode....

Hoping someone could clarify what there is or isn't in Mach.

Cheers
Bruce

[ger21]

Is mAch supposed to refactor things like soft limits when running code opposite to the machines default?

Ideally, it should, but it doesn't.

It's always been recommended for people that run both imperial and metric programs, is to set up two separate Mach3 profiles, one with the default units in inches, and one in mm's.

When you want to run metric programs. you start Mach3 with your metric profile.
When you want to run imperial programs, you start Mach3 with your inch profile.

There are many more issues than just softlimits that are affected by G20/G21, so two profiles makes things much safer.

[racedirector]

Thanks Gerry, sounds like the dual profile thing is the way to go then so I will duplicate the imperial profile with the metric equivalent. I only set my machine up in imperial in the first place due to the vast amount of things on the web and here being imperial based. All my own stuff I can do in metric, which is native to Australia....

Cheers
Bruce

[ger21]

If you're downloading .dxf files and creating the g-code yourself, just scale the drawing by 25.4 times before creating the g-code, and it will be in mm's.
If you're downloading and running g-code from others, than the 2 profile method is the way to go.

[racedirector]

I have been doing that lately, found the scale command in Draftsight a few weeks ago. Nightmare doing that if manually building something, no probs for a CNC machine to cut things like 232.667mm