Newbie Looking For Advice with Elderado Bridgemill
Hey there everybody! I'm new to the forum and looking for a little experienced advice. I generally tinker with autos and bikes, typical jack of all trades, master of none. I am new to the forum and plan on surfing old threads to learn as I go.
I have an Elderado Bridgemill I purchased in '05. It has a DRO and CNC. The controller is the proto-type that is currently used on the Patriot. I have Mach II that I run on a dedicated PC. I became occupied with career changes and have only tinkered with the machine occasionally.
Two things. First is set up I have spent a lot of time setting up the machine, tweaking the unit. I am looking to add a home switches on X,Y and Z. Any suggestions on locations? Should I use limit switches instead? Being a 3and1, I am concerned about crashing into the lathe.
I think I have the steppers tuned optimum for use. I was having trouble with the X stalling on occasion. Come to find out the drive pulley set screw was loose. After tightening it, the stepper has not stalled since. I am still trying to set up Mach II for travel limits, but am having trouble with determining a starting point so that the posted code does not conflict with limits.
The second primary subject is BobCad. I realize that they have moved way above the V19 that I have, but I made a considerable investment for it to just go out and buy the newist version. I am trying to learn the program and run into occasional hurdles to overcome. Does anybody know of a practical book to learn how to apply the V19 to the Mach II to be productive. Most of the manual focuses on improvements over V18. I think I can design my parts, but I'm not sure about the contour corrections or whether I need to be concerned with them. It seems that these are considerations to be taken when I input the bit size and overlap. I wish their tech help was as talkative as their sales reps.
I have a friend who put me in touch with his CAD people, but they deal with Master CAM with real machinery and are not familiar with the small details of piecing together systems. I look forward to learning from this forum. I am amazed that it is getting harder to find experienced metal workers. I tried to find my metalshop teacher for advice to find the shop is gone at the school. That's another thread. I plan on ball screws, but I need to be able to use the machine first to jusitify the expense to the other half. Any other ideas for setting up the Elderado would be appreciated.Thanks in advance.