Thank you for reading! Still having trouble answering these questions after reading all guides and watching all the very helpful videos posted:
1) Should I be zero'ing the Machine Co-Ords above the material, with Z-axis touching material to be milled?
[The machine coordinates are zeroed where your automatic homing routine sends it at start-up. If your machine doesn't do a homing routine, you can ignore them.]
2) Every code generated appears to, at line 3 (I believe) send my z axis up a variable amount, almost always more than my physical limit.
[It sounds like you're setting your floating Z zero too high. What you need to do is set it at the center of the rotary axis, not at the top of wherever your material is. ]
3) Importing the .STL into DeskProto also seemed to have shrank it by a factor of 5 I believe. Not sure how, but noticed my part was only about 2mm rather than 10mm after import.
[Check to make sure all your units are millimeters, in DeskProto, Mach3, and whatever CAD program you're using.]
I am attempting to use a 25mm rectangular prism as a material, and an .STL of a small cylinder with a 10mm diameter.
End result continues to either :
plunge directly into material, and then I e-stop
or
It climbs the variable amount in the Z axis, and then does not lower back to material height.
[You need to get the zeros and sizes right before trying to cut anything. It sounds like it's pretty confused right now. How are you defining your material? Does it show the cylinder in the middle of the prism, or somewhere else?]
I believe I am having an issue setting and differentiating between the machine vs work co-ords in mach3, and am likely missing something in DeskProto. I think I am not properly setting my Z max height of the material? Attempts at this even did not fully give me fully what I expected however, so I am not sure what else I could be messing up on.
[Yes; you need to tackle these issues one at a time, and get them all sorted out before you ruin a lot of material and break a bunch of bits.]
If anyone has some suggestions, or links to material non-Venus related I could use as examples it would be greatly appreciated!
[Sorry, all my material is in a cloud on Venus. But did you try reading the Deskproto manual
DeskProto >> download >> downloadable manuals ?]
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was also curious if my issue is that I am using mach3 Mill rather than Mach3 Turn. Still quite new to all of this, thank you!