Boss 5 download success

[rsr911]

Dave,

Hard to explain what I have in mind exactly, I already have a temporary version of the back in place. I have two identical vises on my table and there are holes to mount the jaws on the backside of the vise as well. I'm going to use standoffs from those holes to attach a 12" high piece of sheetmetal. This piece will extend to each end of the table and have a piano hinge on each end that I'll attach L-shaped sheetmetal doors to so when the doors close they cover the sides and front of the table. The front of the doors will be notched to go over top of the vise fronts. A simple latch and I'll be all set. Remember I'm only trying to catch what's thrown from the tool as my table drainage is excellent even with two large nozzles feeding the cutter. I'll post pics when I get done with it.

[mochinist]

<font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2">Originally posted by rsr911:
Stephan, where did you learn about the 600 lines of code? I would assume this is actually not lines of code but total charactors. I wonder how many K of memory these machines have. </font>

I think he probably means 600 actual lines of code, engraving programs are notoriously long because of all the different arcs in your font of choice. Some of the fancier DNC programs compensate for the lack of memory in most CNC machines by doing what is called drip feeding.

[rsr911]

Yeah what I meant was you could have up to so many charactors total, if they where all small lines of code I suppose you could go beyond 600 lines. Biggest file I ever sent the machine was 8K I think.

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-Christian D. Sokolowski

[sdeering]

Ya the top drawing was done with MC. The post was about 1800 lines long. I was interested to see what it would hold. Mostly x y z cordinates, lines are quits short. It doesnt use anything fancy the arks take up a lot of space it just moves a lot of idybidy straight lines to make an ark. It looks awsome though. I had to set up the NC it was origionally to .0001, no need fore the 4th place.
Christian I did Email you about a post did you get it?
Stephen

[rsr911]

Stephan,

I'm out of town until tonight, I'll check when I get home.

One thing I've pondered while reading the programming manual, the machine is capable of 0.001" accuracy but the control is capable of 0.0001" I've never bothered working in tenths, do you notice any difference? I suppose the best way would be to write small programs for circles one in thousandth's and one in ten thousandths and measure each part.

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-Christian D. Sokolowski

[sdeering]

I thought the boss 6 was capable of 1/2 thou. and boss 5 was 1.It did save a room removing 1 character from each position.
I shure hope my fuze problem is amperage set to high. Hope to pick up some fuses this week and check.
Stephen

[rockrat]

Looks like I got in to this a bit late. Some how missed the thread.

There was a question of memory. Here is what I use. According to the manual, the Boss will hold the equivalent of 80 feet of punch tape.

One character on the punch tape uses 0.1 inch of tape in spacing. So, 80*12=960 inches of tape. How many 0.1" in 960? 960/0.1=9600.

I looked at my files and I have never gone over 8000. 7200, 7058 and 7265 were the largest sections. Again, these programs were broke up at an easy point to remember instead of just running them to 9600 and trying it out.

I will say the that boss tape reader will stop when the memory is full. I did try my first engraving program at full length and the reader stopped reading the tape with 3 or so feet to go.

So, now I use a program called text tally to help me break up the code. It will count the characters in the nc file and report the total.

http://www.harmonyhollow.net/ttally.shtml

No relation, happy user, dont blame me, yada yada yada, bla bla bla.

So, I add an E at the end of the program, % at the start, and take all of the spaces out of the code. Trailing 0's are removed and only used when I have to locate at a 0.0. Line numbers are reduced to n1, n2, n3 etc... to save memory. And, all of this is done with a program called... I'm an idiot, cant find it. Let me look around and see what I did with it.

Anyhow, have you fellers found anything different? Memory for example.

And yes, plans are still on to convert to pc and dump the Boss electronics. One of these days after the garage goes up.

rock-

Ahhh yes. I was using Vedit, when it was free. Now I cant find a free download, but the current download will work for a while. But at $79.00, I would never buy it. $79.00 for a text editor? Yipe! So I'm now off to find a free editro that will reconize the return (EOB) character in the search and replace. Suggestions? I'm Google'n now.

[This message has been edited by rockrat (edited 01-02-2006).]

[sdeering]

I looked at the program used above it was 1676 lines long and 29.1K Just FYI

Rock are you using tape or a PC? Thats funny because I had to remove the % then it worked.For PC that is.

I plan on retroing mine as well, keep us in the loop when you do yours. I'v been recerching and there is lots of info out there on BP retros, too much.
Can one use a MC post with Mack 2 or 3.Seems thats what everyone is using it to controle steppers nowadays.

Do I have this right PC, mack 2or3, to some kind of opto isolator, to drives, motors. Plus a different power supply.

Whats the norm. Use the origional motors
If origional I think u only use 2 of the 4 windings, is that correct?

Hope to get fuses tomorrow snd do some testing.
Stephen