Hi

new to Mach4 and needed setup for vfd spindle operation. I cant seem to get relay to turn for spindle. I am using a UC100 at the moment with Gecko G540, windows 10 . I have every working in Mach3.

thanks

anybody home?

Do you have a signal configured to control the relay?

In Mach4 you would use Config > Mach at the top of the main screen and
then select Output Signals. In the chart there you need to scroll down to
find the signal named Spindle On and assign the UCC device and the pin
number for the relay driver in the G540.

Hi Thanks for the reply

yes I have output 1 spindle relay to pin 17 and spindle on to pin 14.

I have the same problem with UC100! Worked fine with Mach3. I can turn on my spindle but can't get PWM to work.  Any help yet?

In the UC100 configuration menu, what do you have in the Spindle settings tab? You should have a pin assigned under Spindle PWM Pin. That same pin should be assigned to Spindle On under Configure>Control>Output Signals. If you'd prefer to communicate with me directly, you can submit a ticket at support.machsupport.com. The UC100 can be tricky to set up with spindle control, but I'm happy to help.

-Bryanna

Subject: Setup Spindle for PWM
 
 
Thank you for replying! I Think I finally got the UC100 setup right! I now have Output Signals set as follows: Output #1 UC100 Port1 Pin1, Spindle On UC100 Port1 Pin17, Spindle Fwd Port1 Pin14. Spindle 0 MinRPM 0.00, MaxRPM 24000. The only thing I need to do now is see if there is a way to display current RPM & calibrate a scale. If you have any pointers, I would appreciate any suggestions!

I think my problem was screwing around in the UC100 plugin. I contacted them and they said:

Hi,

I have checked the problem and the Spindle Mode dropdown box is obselete and it seems that my collegues accidentally forgot to remove it from the plugin form.
So, the Spindle Mode dropbox on the plugin form does nothing now and is already removed from the form in the upcoming plugin release.
If you want step/dir spindle then in the Mach configuration on the Spindle tab page there is a "Step/dir spindle Axis" selection and select the axis in that dropdown or select none if you want PWM spindle.

Best Regards,
Balazs
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Balazs Klincsik
25 Pafrany utca, Pecs, 7633 Hungary
Tel.:+36-70-7790447

Hi,
if you want really accurate spindle speed Mach can measure it and display it for you.

It requires a sensor attached to the motor shaft that pulses once each revolution, an index pulse. If you connect that to a spare input your controller Mach will measure the time
between pulses and calculate the motor speed. There is a DRO already in most screen sets to display it.

It is not uncommon for the spindle speed to vary somewhat from what you programmed. The error has multiple sources but usually it is non-linearity of the analogue
output of your BoB which is derived from the PWM signal from your controller. There is also a degree of 'slip' between the VFD frequency and the spindle rotational frequency,
its how asynchronous motors work.

Error between what you have programmed and what you actually get are seldom more than 10%. The question I ask is 'does it matter that much'. No doubt any number of people will
jump in and lambast me for my sacrilege...but there you have it. I think in many cases people spend hour upon hour and hundreds of dollars trying to get spindle speed just so
and really gain little.

All the old manual mills, lathes and drills I've used over the years had fixed ratios. I couldn't get exactly the speed I wanted, I used the closest I could get and got on with the job.
Did not having exactly the right ratio stop me....no.....did it make a bad job of the parts I made....no....did I have to make intelligent feed allowances for the speed that could be achieved...
yes.

You will have to decide how much effort you want to make to 'linearise' your spindle speed. Note that Mach4 is not a realtime controller therefore Mach4 cannot in itself close a feedback loop.
Closing a feedback loop requires realtime hardware, ie your controller. I don't believe at this time that your UC100 or in fact any of the UC series has the ability to close a speed loop with
PWM output.

The ESS of Warp9 does have that ability but it is very new and so I can't tell how good a job it does.
The PoKeys 57CNC has the ability and also has PoBlocks board level programming and I suspect would do a good job.
The Hicon of Vital Systems can do it but you have to pay an extra $500-600 to have that feature activated.
Not sure about the PMDX-422, I know it has a good suite of features for lathe threading and would guess that its very possible that it can close a speed loop.

Another possibility to improve spindle speed accuracy without a feedback loop is to use a look up table. You would have to take and record speed measurements.
Then you could construct a table in Mach so that if you programed a speed of 15000 pm say Mach would tweak it to 16300 rpm because your spindle is a little slower than it should be.
It would not be as good as a feedback loop but I imagine you could get to within 5% or so.

Craig

I have the same problem with UC100! Worked fine with Mach3. I can turn on my spindle but can't get PWM to work.  Any help yet?

I never received any for some reason. What exactly was wrong that you changed to make it work?

In addition to the information I supplied in my post, I had to set the UC100 Spindle setup to pin 1 and check the negative box.