Recent Posts

21

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Mach4 - C82 - PlasmaSensOut - Z axis

« Last post by paul.stephens on March 17, 2026, 02:44:33 PM »

Our THC does something called Axis Override.. It uses a fake or false motor to handle the Jog velocity moves of your Z axis. In rare cases, some may want to have a separate Steps per Unit for their THC. When your THC tells Mach it wants to go up or down, you get this Axis override command to command Z in its stead.  All this logic is handled inside of your M3 macro. So when you call M3, it will start looking for the up or down commands after we have ARC OKAY and we get past to the "Cut" Sequence of the torch.

22

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Mach4 - C82 - PlasmaSensOut - Z axis

« Last post by grivalsky on March 17, 2026, 05:05:01 AM »

I don't understand one more thing. If I define THC as OB1 motor 5, how does he know that it is Z axis motor 2 if I didn't tell him?

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Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Mach4 - C82 - PlasmaSensOut - Z axis

« Last post by grivalsky on March 16, 2026, 02:32:32 PM »

Thanks for the help, When I get to the plasma I will try it and write.
I only use the C82 board which controls the drivers for the stepper motors.
I followed this manual which I attach in the attachment.

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Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Mach4 - C82 - PlasmaSensOut - Z axis

« Last post by paul.stephens on March 16, 2026, 09:53:59 AM »

There's a manual for the plasma configuration in your Docs folder of Mach. I attached it to this message.

"
Plasma machine configuration is similar to that of a mill or a router. THC, however, is handled with an
out-of -band motor. For example, if Motor 2 in the profile is mapped to the Z axis, an out-of-band
motor must be enabled and its motor tuning settings must match those of Motor 2. If Motor 5 is used
as the OB motor and axis, it must be assigned as OB1(6)
In the Configure drop-down menu, open the Plasma Screen Configuration panel.
Default THC mode, THC Axis, and the Analog Register will be set here.
"

In short, set motor5 to be matching your Z axis Counts per unit, accel, and velocity and map motor5 to OB1 for plasma. If you can't get normal motion out of your Z axis, then you will not be able to get THC motion out of your Z axis. You can start by testing Manual mode to see if you can get up and down commands by clicking. If you can do that, then we could move to Digital.

Do you have other motion controllers or do you just have the ESS?

25

G-Code, CAD, and CAM discussions / Mach 4 Lathe G96 doesnt work

« Last post by Baumeister25 on March 16, 2026, 06:24:54 AM »

Hi everyone,
i changed my Optimum Lathe to CNC using closed loop stepper motors for X and Z from Stepperonline and a Servo for the spindle, also from Stepperonline. Electronically i use the MB3 breakout board with a ESS Smoothstepper. So far all works including thread turning. So all axis + the spindle can be controlled via Mach 4 without problems.
BUT: G96 doesnt work. The machine simply ignores it. The G code comes from Fusion 360 and looks ok to me. Diameter is set correctly. I also tried some code like this in manually:
G0 G54 G18 G40 G80
G0 X40 Z0
G97 S1000  M3 (first set constant speed)
G50 S3000 (set maximum rpm for G96)
G96 S90 M3
G01 X10 F10 (now the rpm should increase i think)

==> Result: The rpm stays constant at 1000.
What am i doing wrong - what do i need to do to make it work?
Thanks for your support!

26

MachPro General Discussion / Assign Button to Call M132

« Last post by tbadger on March 15, 2026, 02:58:28 PM »

I've got a RapidChange Solo ATC setup on my CNC. To probe for Z zero, I now use M132. I'd like to create a button on one of the dashboards to call this M code. But in reviewing all options (that I can find), there is no clear way to do this, except to create a user script.

The documentation here, https://support.machmotion.com/books/shared-content-public-f71/page/machpro-widgets-dashboard-commands-and-function-buttons#bkmrk-user-commands  is somewhat vague IHMO on what can be done.  It states the following:

One option for user commands are User Scripts. These are lua functions that will be executed as the command, to get the feedback state, or to forward to the target. This is a way to create completely custom functionality. They should always be done in the UserGUIModule.UserStartUpScript function. The following is an example of how to create these lua function in the UserGUIModule.

Within the Profile > Router > Macros > Scripts folder, there are several files that might be the right candidate, but which one is unclear. In none of those files is the section (or function) labeled UserGUIModule.UserStartUpScript.

Is this still a work in progress, or is there something that I may have missed, or is there a better way to have a button call and execute M132?

My preference is that on pressing the button, it will call M132 and CycleStart if that is necessary.  My only option right now is to use MDI and CycleStart, which is really inconvenient.

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Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Mach4 - C82 - PlasmaSensOut - Z axis

« Last post by grivalsky on March 13, 2026, 04:07:08 PM »

Now I just tested why the z-axis doesn't work for me. I just quickly configured it so I didn't have to do everything. I found out, as I already wrote, that the z-axis only works for me with the ESS 278.1 plugin, which I still don't understand why the Z-axis doesn't work for me with other plugins.

Here I'm sending my motor settings at the moment when I was using the ESS 278.1 plugin. Where all the motors worked and the plasma cut, but the THC didn't work for me.


I've never used it Motor5; "THC Axis"
because I couldn't find it in any manual.

28

M31 Motion Controller / Re: VFD

« Last post by paul.stephens on March 13, 2026, 02:06:06 PM »

If you do not have a Di1 connected, how are you getting a spindle forward command? Di1 should be connected to something like the FE for an optocoupler or it should be connected to HwEN to be controlled by a physical relay with the other side of the circuit coming from 24v that is provided by the VFD. On our last call, I thought we had a spindle forward command working along with Speed Control?

29

M31 Motion Controller / Re: VFD

« Last post by edcross on March 13, 2026, 01:04:00 PM »

You had me move fe  fc from spindle connector to J11, no wire on  D11 vfd term

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Mach4 General Discussion / RTCP for a XYZCA (five axes) CNC

« Last post by pjcevallos@gmail.com on March 13, 2026, 12:49:23 PM »

Hi

Does Mach4 industry do the kinematics for 5 axes (RTCP)?

someone posted this very useful video of the explanation.

Any tips are welcomed for programming and setting up the machine as I could not find too much posts about the topic or manuals.