A small update while getting my head around transitioning from woodworker to machinist!
Kiri:Moto probably deserves an updated thread of it’s own, will do that (or add to the old one) once I have my act a little more together - many thanks to @stewart for all his work and brilliant support.
We are still mid summer holidays here, so I’m up to my armpits in grandkids, which adds just slightly to the learning curve, while I hypocritically try to make progress while banning them from their various devices because we have a perfectly good beach a few hundred metres away.
Alone again, and I’ve managed to understand enough of Kiri:Moto to get the machine to do a fair imitation of Marcel Marceau, miming the cutout of my test piece. Tomorrow we’ll attack the foam!
I haven’t cut anything yet and it’s already clear that my cut area is not going to be big enough, just as well I’m committed to a new table top!
You know how it goes; you are pretty much set up when a mate drops around and wants a small job done. It’s all a very pleasant diversion, and an hour or two later he leaves happy with two modified parts for his shower waste and I have to remember where I was.
I guess I was excited, because I saw the poor thing was out of plumb but it all seemed to be OK, so I shrugged and thought "there’ll be a new one soon if I ever get this thing fired up. I didn’t notice that the Z axis had dropped on one side only, so went ahead, set z0 and fired her up.
Well a few things didn’t quite go as expected!
First - (and I’d appreciate an answer on this one) the thing took off like a scalded cat to the far end of the foam and then proceeded to run through it’s paces.
Why doesn’t it know where X0-Y0 is? Is it something I said?
Then I noticed how far out of level the gantry was and cancelled the “print” - accidentally hit 10 instead of 1 to ease the bit out of the work and fired the gantry out of it’s screw on the opposite side. Well that wasn’t scary nor difficult to fix, but I must go back and check what stops I have set in Kiri:Moto - I presume it thinks 90mm is above the new 0 I’ve just set?
Ahh well - it all works and I’m into it, but as is always the case when we get to some sort of climax - we’ll be away for a few day, have visitors for a few more (little grand-boys this time) so who knows when this will get sorted!!!
You know. I would love to do a bit of a write up about this. I think it is a very good tool and a lot of people will prefer using this style of CAM. The issue is, it is so different from what I am used to I don’t understand how to do it. If you don’t want to do a full write up, maybe just a few hints to get me going and I can take it from there?
I will happily do what I can. The difference is what makes it attractive to me at least and therefore I suspect others starting out. Give me a few weeks to see if I can get into it a bit more.
My newbie mistakes just keep on coming. Despite having drawn several crowns and watched the carriage zing around and do as I’ve asked over the past year or so - it turns out I’d had the Z backwards - I suspect that not spotting it earlier was just a product of my numerical dyslexia - for some reason my brain won’t process those “+” and “-” signs without the addition of a direction arrow!
It’s OK I have the same issue with the printer - I can’t work out if I’m coming or going. (And I think that’s why Kiri:Moto gives me hope.) Three axes, six directions, two ways to turn a knob and I can’t process any of it. It’s why I can’t dance either.
BTW -I’ve just realised the forum software is now processing .heic images direct from the phone… nice! EDIT - I’ve changed the photo to reflect the real direction (a mistake I’d made with the initial software profile - and I don’t even know what it was - had the machine operating in inverse.) I am now only slightly less confused!-
Today I’ve learned that the “Home” menu doesn’t take me the “Home” screen!
I couldn’t figure why I’ve repeated that mistake a couple of times, and it’s just burnt-in behaviour. When I hit the “home” button on every device I own it doesn’t “home” everything attached to it! Now that is clear, I’m pretty sure my sub-conscious mind can deal with that.
What I haven’t figured is “homing” Z. My understanding is that the X and Y axis are “home” wherever they start up, but the Z starts from where you move it? This obviously requires some magic that I’ve not yet discovered as the Z heads “home” as well. What step have I missed?
I’m sorry about this, I’ve been trying to avoid asking the questions I should be able to find out myself. I’ve been trying to learn your Milling basics by rote, and as soon as it clicks all will be good.
:Home" yes that’s very clear but deep down my brain has an over-ride and makes me push the button!
G0 Z5 ; Lift Z axis 5mm
M00 ; Pause so the Z axis does not fall
Is that OK, or is this a question better answered by @stewart on the Kiri:moto forum?
Don’t get me wrong - there’s nothing wrong with the software, but I simply don’t have enough knowledge to poke too deeply (it’s really intuitive though so when I know where to poke I can poke easily!)
G90 and G92 do different things, so you can have both in the header. G90 is there on the off hand chance a jog command leaves the machine in G91 before a job is kicked.
It’s ok to have G92 in the header if you immediately start the job after jogging the head to origin. But in some scenarios, this may not be advisable.
That might explain my next little problem! Here’s my first ever cut - (ignore the tearout - you get that when you forget to turn on the router in your excitement…) You can see in the background I had a second try just to see what was happening - the spindle drops at startup to the level of the first cut - after that it does as it’s told, so I suspect it isn’t being told anything just for that little bit.
I’ll be away now till around Tuesday - will pop back on from time to time but will continue then.
NOTE TO ALL I apologise to those who know a bit about this stuff. My objective in posting is obviously to make it easier for me to sort out, but to diarise my stumbling blocks in some sort of order so we can write a “Kiri:Moto for Beginners” (I almost said “dummies” there) document - I think for many some of these little issues are so trivial they aren’t even considered, so bear with me for a bit!
Well there’s another day I’m not going to get back. Spent a lot of it becoming familiar with Kiri:Moto’s most intimate parts, then becoming incredibly disgruntled with my complete inability to find how to fix my little “Z axis fails to lift on startup” issue. I was just about to toss it all in and sit in a corner sucking my thumb for a bit when @stewart bobbed up with a fix for what turned out to be a brand new bug or at least a problem I’ve discovered … or created.
There are plenty of other things that were my fault though, so I can’t get too smug.
Thought I’d better print a K:M Crown too, direct from the .svg file, because I can, and it was a beautiful thing apart from finishing 6mm too soon, and while on the subject of being a bit short - the LR2 was supposed to be 800 x 1200 (1/3 sheet) but ended up not. Which means that it’s not big enough to do the first job I’m going ot throw at it; the LR3 struts. They’ll need to be cut one at a time and on the diagonal, but it looks as though they might work well enough now that I know they’ll (just) fit.
That’s sort of settled the new table size too. I made my lathe bench twenty years ago to fit in a particular space, and it doesn’t have to be as deep as it is. Therefore if I make a new top, and modify the lathe stand I might just squeak in a 690 x 1200 cut area which will be too small for the next job, but so be it.
A long long time ago in a Galaxy far away, someone wrote:
I valued that comment so greatly that it stuck in my mind so firmly I could search it out now. You see, this IS my sportscar! I like to make things as nicely as I can and for me the changes and repairs along the way represent the geological history of projects I’ve made with the tool and the fun I’ve had along the way.
So I’ve been fretting about what colour to make it in, was going to make it two-toned like the factory model, then thought an all black “Darth Vader” might be great but now I think I’m heading towards melting some of my stock of Prusament Galaxy Silver.
Then I wondered why no-one has come up with some lovely side covers to hide all those whirring and spinning things.
