Quantum - The next generation

[Brian Barker]

Quantum is the next line that we at ArtSoft are working on... This is out of the mach series of software and will have many enhancements over mach3. The first problem that Art and I wanted to look at was "Jerk". Jerk is the 3rd order derivative of position... you also can think of it as the Rate of change of acceleration... Or you can thing of it like this:
If you get in your care and mash the pedal down you will feel a sharp snap and then a constant force pulling on you. The same thing will happen when you let off the gas to stop accelerating up to speed. So as a good driver you all press on the gas just to get the tires moving and then apply more to help build you up to speed. This gives you a nice smooth ride because you have minimized the Jerk.

Okay how is a CNC machine like your car... Mach3 is the guy with the digital gas pedal! It uses a constant acceleration to get to speed. The graph of the acceleration looks like a square wave  and makes the Velocity look like a trapezoid. This is known as a "Bang - Bang" Velocity profile because of the huge jerks from the square wave acceleration. This is okay for mills that run under 100 IPM but a machine like a shopbot can't take it! So what we have done is ramped the acceleration to the amount of jerk that you would like to have (in/sec^3) This will give you a trapezoidal Acceleration and a Velocity that is a trapezoid with rounded corners (Known as S-curving). Art ran a test on his mill and with a jerk of 8000 mm/sec^3 he was not spilling water running 2mm squares at 1000mm/min! There is stell a bit more work that needs to be done to get this finished but it is working and the results are looking good

Here is an example of before and after Scurve:

There are other things that we are looking to put into Quantum but that is for an other post
 

[vmax549]

Hi Brian that is interesting, But ya know a lot of people have a lot of time and money invested in Mach technology. It would be nice if yous guys would finish up with Mach by finishing up all the loose ends and add ins needed by the masses before you venture off into WARP technology. By The way the next generation of speed should be WARP speed.

(;-) TP

[Chaoticone]

Eagerly awaiting Quantum.  

Brett

[Brian Barker]

Terry what are the things that you woud like to see finished? G100? that is a plugin and should work on both quantum and Mach3...

What are  you thinking?

[ART]

Terry:

   Thats exactly the problem. Soem are expecting Mach3 to warp ahead, but it cant. Its speed (at least on the printer port) cannot go faster. Its impossible.
SO Q is the only way to "warp" ahead. Im afraid weve spoiled you with too many toys that in theory cannot work. Though we have managed to make many of them
work, the only way we can add more floors is to build a better basement. Mach3 will continue to be debugged to make it as bulletproof as it can be, then it stops.
Adding any more floors to it is asking for a building collapse. Not good for anyone. We consider MAch3's fucntions to be maxed out, so the only choice we have is to
lock it down, make all the various fucntions work, and in parallel, put the warp in Q. Mach3, for its level and what it does is a technical marvel, (look for another windows
program in that price range that comes close in functions to see what I mean..)

  I appreciate the comment, but most simply cannot understand the level of complexity of Mach3, its why the latest bugs take so long to remove, there are thousand of
interlocking logic streams that are simply too complex to know and find the interactions of.  Anyway, for a vast array of technical reasons, MAch3 will not have any more functions
added to it, it will now lockdown to bug repair permanently, more as a safety measure for the users, as well as a requirment if we're to have future growth..  

  Mach3 will continue as the flagship for a very long time I suspect, but in the end, new and better control will be required, so Q is in the hopper as it gives us much breathing room
as developers..

Thanks,
Art.

[vmax549]

Good morning Art, I guess my question should have been will the new Q be compatible with the old Mach hardware/OS or is a major upgrade required??

Good Morning Brian, I think things like converstional programming could be advanced, probing options,drilling/tapping options,CR options,Multipart options. Lcam needs pocketing,drill/tap routines.

Please note I am fully aware of ALL the benifits MACH provides for a very small price.(;-) Just trying to help it along.

(;-)TP

[Scott]

Hi Art & Brian,

On the S-curve acceleration subject, does that mean that you'll have exact g-code path with it or will there still be rounded corners?  Sounds promising. 

Thanks,

[wcarrothers]

probably not the place to ask..  But quantom isn't to use the parallel port any longer..

Is there a front runner choice for supported interface device at the moment?  (Please say Grex seeing I've got one but not using it since it does not support more then 1 mpg input so far as I know...)

b.

[Brian Barker]

This will make it so that exact stop will no longer make the table shake badly and will make it so you can run a much higher Acceleration with out killing the table. So Scott No it will not give you a new path type BUT should make your table run MUCH smoother.

The G100 and the NCpod will be the ones that we start with but there should be many others by the time we are done

This is only the start of the work that we are going to do in Quantum... there is much more

[Graham Waterworth]

I see no problem in Quantum being a complete new system, both software and hardware.

As long as Mach3 is maintained current users have no reason to worry.

A new hardware system with up to date custom software is a good idea cobbled Mach3 is not, you would not want a microsoft scenario where the new hardware is limited by backward compatability.

I say good on you, make it new and up to the minute, forget the past make it as good as is possible.

By the time its ready to release most people will be ready to upgrade anyway.

These are my views and only my views.

Graham.