Very Newbie Question(s)

[Longknife]

I'm completely new to VCarve and Mach3 but have managed to bumble my way through a few projects so far.

I managed to calibrate my machine today which should help things a lot but I also have a very basic question:

What file format should I be saving my toolpaths in, in VCarve? I asked the previous owner and he just said "whatever it defaulted to". Which in the case of the version of VCarve I have is .nc (AXYZ 4010 Arcs ATC (inch)).

My version of Mach 3 is quite old as well (1.something). Did that version allow you to traverse axis's with the arrow keys? I can't seem to manually control my machine without manually inputting values in the "Goto Zero" area, which is a pain.

I also really need to see up the limits for my machine as I've ran in the stops a few times moving it around. I'm sure I can find a simple tutorial for that one, however.

Thanks

[usLEDsupply]

For Mach 3 I would use the Mach 2/3 Arcs inch .txt (in you are using inches) if you are lucky enough to have a tool changer use the one with ATC on the end
if i remember there are some good videos on youtube that show setting up the limits and they would be better than us trying to explain it to you. but if you need help feel free to ask or even give me a call

[martin54]

Not sure if you would need to pay to upgrade mach3 to the latest version or not but might be worth asking, being quite new myself I am not familiar with the older versions of mach3 at all. Have you got physical limit switches on the machine ? If you have then you may be able to set them up automatically in mach3 if you don't know the pin numbers associated with them like I say not familiar with your version, you may also find you can set soft limits if you don't have physical switches.
There are some setup videos on the mach website & also some on the tube as has already been said.

[Longknife]

Thanks guys. Noted on the Mach 2/3 post processor.

Yes, I will just youtube a tutorial to set my limits. My machine is pretty rudimentary so I don't believe it has limit switches.

[usLEDsupply]

if it at least has home switches set the soft limits in Mach 3 and they will work almost as good as real limit switches