mach 3 help

[maria galligan]

Can anybody give me a simple step by step guide to using mach 3 software. I have been searching for tutorials and have the mach e guide from mach support but it is so large and complicated it will take me weeks to read it and I may not understand it. All I want to know is how to import text as names and engrave them. Any help please.
Thanks Maria

[Mike Heidrick]

Maria, I use Vectric VcarvePro to do that kind of work as it is super simple. It is a great Cad/Cam package that I use to generate Gcode. I then use Mach as my post processor software to process that Gcode and it drive my cnc router.

Are you ONLY using mach and using it as both your CAM and Post Processor software??

Also is mach setup for your machine.

There are links at mechsupport to mach videos - have you watched those?

Also Vectric has free downloads you can try out.

[maria galligan]

Maybe my question was not written well. What I'm wanting is a simple step by step guide to using Mach3. As I said I have the using Mach3 mill users guide off the Mach support site but at 157 pages it's mind boggling technical. I will be using something else to produce the gcode not sure what yet as budget is tight. So what I need to know what to do with the gcode in Mach3 to get my 3020 machine engraving. Any help please?

[Dan Hintz]

Maria,

You seem to be asking a lot of very basic, low-level questions on all of your new machines. The best advice I can give you is to read those manuals you seem so afraid of, then once that is done, start on page 1 of the Creek (both the engraver's forum and the CNC forum... the CNC forum is MUCH shorter) and read from the first post up to the current day's. The manual that comes with Mach3 is actually pretty decent, and you need to understand it if you wish to have any hope of turning out a real project without breaking 100 bits/month.

[Michael Simpson Virgina]

The most difficult part about Mach3 is setting it up. If it is already setup for your machine you should have very basic interaction to get started. All the real work is done on your CAD/CAM packages.

[maria galligan]

Thank you Michael. I wandered if it was simpler than the manual made it. It is set up for my machine but as I am waiting for part for my new machine it came damaged, I can't fully run it yet.

[Michael Simpson Virgina]

Does your new machine have automatic homeing switches? If it does you will simply hit the refall button on the main panel. This will cause the machine to home. This will give you a 0,0,0 ref on your machine. Its possible that it only homes X and Y. In that case you will have to home Z manualy or with a probe to the surface of your material that is being worked.

Once homed the main thing you will do is load G code. Then run the code using the start cycle button. Of coures there are thousands of options you can set and things you can do.

I am suprised the machine did not have any basic operating instructions. I just finished a book on building a CNC and I devoted a chapter to basic operation. IE loading code and running it.

[maria galligan]

The machine came with no instructions, which was a bit disappointing. Thank you for this advise as I did not know about homing the axis. I will ask the person we bought from for instructions.

[Gerry Grzadzinski]

I highly recommend watching at least the first 4 or 5 videos here.
http://www.machsupport.com/videos/