Machsupport Forum
Mach Discussion => General Mach Discussion => Topic started by: John S on April 14, 2013, 09:03:04 AM
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Screen shots, video etc ??
John S.
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Brain gave an overview of Mach 4 and had it running at his booth.
Brett let me fool with the program, of course I broke it, but he was able to fix things so it ran again.
Graham learned how to use a screw driver to anchor things down.
Ron Ginger bought another fire engine, or that was a rumour that I heard, can't confirm.
I was just there to monitor and make sure that what happens in Cabin Fever stays at Cabin Fever. >:D
RICH
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Thanks,
A most hopeful thread that says it all.
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On the seroius side....... ;)
Videos were made of the three seminars. When,where and how they will be posted is to be determined.
I assume someone will post info on them in the near future.
RICH
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I was there on Friday and Saturday.
The Friday seminar went well with lots of questions from the audience. I hope I wasn't too annoying. LOL
On the serious side Mach4 looks to be everything that we wanted of Mach3. The list of things that it will do is long but here are a few of my recollections. (I didn't take written notes)
1. No more disconnect between G-code running in VB and the motion planner. VB is gone and has been replaced with Lua. Lua scripts will not get out of sync.
Lua is cross platform so it will work on Linux and Mac as well as windows.
2. No more brains, use Lua scripts which will run faster than brains and be more configurable than brains.
3. The ability to run an axis "out of band". This will allow an axis to move independent of G-code. An example would be the ability to move your tool changer independent of any G-code that might be running.
4. The ability to run more than 1 Modbus slave.
5. Feed rate override that works as fast as you can change it. It works so fast that any lag was not noticeable by me.
6. IIRC a slave motor to an axis doesn't require an actual axis to be used.
For those of you who are concerned about using Lua since you all ready have a bunch of VB the guys will be writing a bunch of basic Lua scripts. This way you won't have to start from scratch when converting. Mach4 and Mach 3 can coexist on the same computer so you will be able to run the machine using Mach3 while you migrate to Mach4. I am not a programmer by any means but Lua doesn't look to be any worse than VB for us mere mortals to use.
One question I was asked was "if I have a functioning machine with Mach3 and I am happy with it do I have to change?" My answer was if you are happy with the machine and it does everything that you need it to do then you don't have to change. I do know that many people will want to change just to have the latest and greatest. I will be purchasing Mach 4 for all my machines as I will really want Mach4 on the lathe when it is ready and I would like to run the same software on all my machines.
The biggest problem that I have with Mach4 is there is not a hard release date yet.
Pricing will be ~$200us IIRC.
There were lots of question on licensing. Due to piracy of Mach3 Mach4 will be node locked to a specific computer. If you are a hobby user you will be able to put it on all your machines. The only caveat being when you try to put it on the 15 machine questions will be asked.
The licensing procedure doesn't require you machine computer to be put on the internet. It will require you to have an internet connected computer and a thumb drive.
I asked how tolerant the licensing will be of hardware changes (specifically about the wizards and I believe that it applies to Mach4 as well). The answer was that it is fairly tolerant but if you change the network card it will require it to be relicensed.
I must say it was great to meet a bunch of people from the forum that I have only met online.
I would like to say Kudos to all of the Mach people for making me feel at home at the booth and during the seminars.
I also want to thank Ron for the wizard seminar. I went to the Saturday one. It was very informative and has convinced me that I need to purchase it. For all of you mechanism builders out there the "link" function should be a godsend. The link function builds a connecting link such as you see on steam engines connecting the driving wheels.
It is possible to build some very complicated parts just by stringing operations together. Sort of a conversational program if you will. The wizard run as a standalone program separate from Mach and generate a vanilla G-code that should be compatible with most machines.
As a side note it will run on windows 8 and Ron had it running on a Windows 8 tablet!!!!
Sorry for the ramble,
Time to get ready for next years Cabin Fever.
Mike
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So to bump this up what happened to the video's ??
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So to bump this up what happened to the video's ??
Last I saw on the Yahoo group that the person who had the video was looking for someone that could host very large files for download.
Maybe ask over there?
Dave
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Here are the links, the videos are up on YouTube.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jFBAm151JRY&list=UUMP91iJ3P4KyEFbihVYL93w (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jFBAm151JRY&list=UUMP91iJ3P4KyEFbihVYL93w)
[url]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nUKGK1BFH_A&list=UUMP91iJ3P4KyEFbihVYL93w]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5sjYd3obtdg&list=UUMP91iJ3P4KyEFbihVYL93w[url]
[url]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nUKGK1BFH_A&list=UUMP91iJ3P4KyEFbihVYL93w (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5sjYd3obtdg&list=UUMP91iJ3P4KyEFbihVYL93w[url)
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Not sure what got screwed up but here is Mach 4.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nUKGK1BFH_A&list=UUMP91iJ3P4KyEFbihVYL93w (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nUKGK1BFH_A&list=UUMP91iJ3P4KyEFbihVYL93w)
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It is coming, M4 I mean. It will be here before global warming or climate change makes any difference in our lives. Now taxes for "our part", thats different ;-)
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All good things take time, some just a hell of a lot more then others. M4 should be great when it gets here.