Manual Mach3

Mach3 Tutorial
Setting up a basic three axis milling machine.
Based on Mach3 2.0

Purpose.
The purpose of this tutorial is to help and to guide the user to, step by step, set up and tune the
Mach3 CNC controller application for use on a basic 3 axis milling machine. We will go thru
the steps of setting up the emergency stop, the charge pump circuit the main axis motors, the
spindle andcoolant as well as the home switches and the software based over-travel limits.
The tutorial is based on the Mach3 v2.0 series and is meant to be used as complement to the
existing Using Mach 3 Mill manual.

Let’s get started.
When first installing the software it’s vital to reboot the computer as the installer prompts. If
you don’t do this the software will not work and you will have tomanually remove the Mach3
driver from the system. After installing the software and rebooting the computer you should
have four icons on your desktop. These icons all launches Mach3 but it also loads a different
set of screens depending on what kind of machine it is we are running. Since this tutorial is
aimed at getting a milling machine up and running we’ll start the software with the onelabelled Mach3Mill. When the software is started you may be presented with the following
dialog but if not don’t worry.

Figure 1: Hardware plugin.

Since we are going to use the computers printer port as the electrical interface between the
computer and our machine we make sure that the Normal Printer Port Operation mode is
selected and since we don’t want to tell Mach3 this information eachtime we start the
software we put a checkmark in the box next to Don’t mask me this again and then click OK.

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Metric or imperial.
The next thing we need to do is to select the native units of choice. To do this we go to the
Config menu and click Select Native Units and select either inches or mm and click OK. Since
I’m a metric guy I choose mm.

Figure 2: Default Units

Please notethat, as the message says before you get to the windows in figure 2, this selection
is not for switching the actual displayed coordinates between inches and mm nor is it meant to
switch between running part programs written in inches or mm. It is ONLY for setup and
tuning of the motors.

The hardware interface and connections.
Now we need to do is tell Mach3 how many parallel ports and atwhich addresses they are
located. If the port is onboard your computers motherboard the standard address is 0x378. But
other addresses are sometimes used as well. We tell Mach3 this information by selecting
Ports and Pins under the Config Menu.

Figure 3: Engine Configuration, Ports & Pins

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First check that the address of Port#1 corresponds to the actual address of your printer port
andthat it is enabled. 0x378 is the address most onboard parallel ports use. Since we won’t be
using a second port here we make sure that Port#2 is disabled. (No checkmark in the Port
Enabled box under Port#2).
Next thing to do is to select our Kernel speed. This is the frequency at which the Mach3 driver
operates and is also the maximum frequency the software will output to your motor drives.We will use 25000Hz here. Also make sure that none of the options on the right side is
enabled and then click Apply.
Next in line is the Motor Outputs tab. This is where we tell Mach3 how many motors we want
to control and to which pins in our printer port the each motor driver is connected. In this case
it’s three axis, X, Y and Z so we enable those three by making sure that there is a greencheckmark in the first column of those axis.
The second column sets the pin to which the step input on our motor drive is connected. In
this case the X axis drive step input is connected to pin 2, Y to pin 4 and Z to pin 6. The third
column is just like the second but for the drives direction inputs, wired to 3, 5 and 7 on this
machine. The actual pin out of your machine may be different. If...