How much of Mach3 function do you lose?

[Lucky13]

I am not sure if I understand how the SS works.  I am into my first build so there is much I don't know yet about Mach3 even.  But I am reading post about getting threading working and spindle control for the SS,  is this something you lose from Mach3 ?   Is there other stuff you lose ?   I assumed becuase there was a plug in for Mach3 that you could still use all of Mach3's functions but I want to make sure.    If not could someone explain exactly what you do lose. 


The SS seems like a great product as far as what it does do,  but it would be a shame to lose all that Mach3 offers.  Like I know there are scripts that will give auto centering and auto corner finding,  will I lose things like this,  or the wizards that Mach3 offers?  Like I said I guess I am just not understanding how SS works where I am so knew to all this.  Any help would be great.  If you don't lose all that Mach3 offers I would like to run a SS on my mill.  It is a servo & Gecko setup with high res encoders so I am sure I could benefit from the speed the SS offers,  just want ot make sure what else it does.



Jess

[Hood]

At the moment the Backlash comp doesnt work but threading in turn works great, much better than with the parallel port. Spindle control works well  for the servo I use for the spindle on my lathe.

Hood

[Lucky13]

Thanks Hood,  I will keep doing my research here but I feel like I am over looking something. 

Does all of Mach3 Wizards still work when using a SS ?


I thought Mach3 had threading already,  so why the need for the SS to do it? 


This is my first build,  so like I said there is lots I don't know about all this yet.  I feel like I need all that Mach3 offers and if I will loose all of these functions the SS doesn't sound like the way for me to go (although I have already bought one).   


Jess

[Hood]

Yes all the wizards still work with the SS, there are still one or two functions that still are not perfect with the SS such as slaved axis homing, FRO is maxed at 100% and backlash comp doesnt work but they will be done at some point. Everything else I can think of works just like with the parallel port.
Is this a lathe you are doing? If so then yes you can thread with the parallel port OR the SmoothStepper, the SmoothStepper I think reacts a bit better to spindle slow down than the parallel port but both do work well.
 If this is a mill you are doing then you can do thread milling but not rigid tapping. The SmoothStepper should at some point be capable of rigid tapping but it is highly unlikely that the parallel port will ever have that function.
 Hood

[RICH]

As already stated backlash compensation dosen't work, but, it is being worked on.
I have not found any problem with using the wizards ( haven't tried them all ).
Have run into a problem with using the XBOX360, but, both Greg and Lee
are working with me on it and should be sorted out shortly.

You may want to check out the WARP9 web site and see what is being posted there.

RICH

  

[Lucky13]

Thanks for the info and replys guy's.     I now have my system mounted up doing bench test.    Doing research it does look like you don't lose any of the wizards or other functions I was worried about.   There seems ot be little documentation on just want you can & cant do but the spendle control and the backlash comp seems to of been the main problems.  I havnt tried to get my spendle setup working yet,  but I will soon.   I am running a Bob Campbell Combo board with the SmoothStepper.  The Bob Campbell board has Spindle control with relays so I am not sure what it going to take to get all this working.  I may have to use the SS for Spindle control and it would be best if I can.  Although the on board relays the BC board has would be nice to use if possible.  I will figure all this out later but for now I have other problems.


For now my system   started out with the bench testing working perfectly without a hitch.  I was kinda pleased with this because this is my first build.   I researched all my parts (BOB,SS,Drivers,ect,ect...)  a lot and when I put power to the system on the bench it came to life without me having to change anything.  Even all my servos started out with lock and being able to jog.  I have had it to the piont it ran the Road Running G-code 10 times in a row without missing a step.  It was a bit course in its movement ( mainly on very slow moves and direction changes).  I have sense changed some settings to give my motors more reselution which did slow down my max IPM (was getting 286ipm, now its 166ipm).


  This really smoothed out the way the motors run a lot and I thought it was good enough to move on towards mounting all the hardware to the machine but it started having problems.  There is a lot I dont understand yet about Mach3's setting so I am going to go back and start putting some time into reading Mach's manual.  What happened is the system started gaining steps (I think) after I changed the motor axis frequency down to 256 (in SS).  This might have caused the step problem (Buffer over run in SS maybe) but I havnt gone back to try and fix it.  When I gave the motors more res I did it in Mach in the motor tuning section and I changed the steps per inch to 40,000 instead of the 25,000 I had.  This would need a 4 to 1 belt gearing to work now but it seems to be more stable at these setting even though I lose some 100ipm on my rapid speed.  I was planning to run 2.5 to 1 gearing before but I would rather have a stable system than high speed rapids.  For now I am goign to try and change the SS setting to 500 and see if the step problem goes away.  If it doesnt I am goign to go ahead and mount all the hardware on the machine anyway because it cant really be tuned right until it is.  But I believe this step problem is the Buffer over run in SS and after changing the frequency in SS back to 500 it might be fine.  If no tI might be getting noise in my incoders or somehting but it didnt do it at the other settings.



Jess