Messages

7041

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Mach4 Demo question

« on: May 07, 2017, 05:10:37 AM »

Hi,
I understand your point and there are some very good products out there...Fanuc, Seimens...if you're prepared to pay.

Craig

7042

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Mach4 Demo question

« on: May 07, 2017, 01:33:12 AM »

Hi,
Mach4 as it stands is ready for use for three axis milling and/or routing. I have not the plant required to test four or five axis stuff
but certainly all the required DROs and control channels exist.

G31 probing is a controller/plugin function. I use Warp9s ESS and G31 works fine and in the last week or two can now handle G31.1 G31.2...etc.
To my knowledge all of the modestly priced controller/plugins are G31 capable.

THC is also a controller/plugin function. It is not yet implemented by ESS. To my knowledge the Vital Systems controller is the only Mach4 ready
controller to have implemented THC.

I have heard but cannot confirm that some of the lathe canned cycles are still a bit ragged, probably not up to production use.

Depending on what machine you want to control I would argue Mach4 is production capable as is.

Craig

7043

General Mach Discussion / Re: Need help urgently.

« on: May 06, 2017, 06:43:42 PM »

Hi,
if you open Device Manager I would expect to see Machs parallel port as a physical device.. something like 'Mach Pulse Engine' or similar.
It is one of the indications that Machs PP is NOT in fact a parallel printer port but is in fact tied to some very tricky low level software competing
with or at least in co-operation with Windows Kernel.

Craig

7044

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Mach4 Demo question

« on: May 06, 2017, 04:35:55 PM »

Hi,
before I bought a licence I found that Mach4 would run for just over six minutes before stopping as result of time limit.
Easily enuf time for me to decide that 'yes Mach4 can mill or at least start to mill that particular part'.

I did buy a licence and Mach4 has proved to be suitable in every respect. The new modular style and LUA coding take some
getting used to but I've realised that Mach4s flexibility FAR FAR exceeds Mach3. While I can understand not wanting to have to buy
another controller if say the Galill is not Mach4 ready... to take advantage of Mach4 do it anyway!

Craig

7045

General Mach Discussion / Re: Limit switch set up on Mach3 with the Gecko g540

« on: May 06, 2017, 04:22:13 PM »

Hi,
I'm guessing you're setting up Mach for the first time and are probably somewhat confused about the choices to make, I certainly
was when I was setting up my mill for the first time.

As Tweakie has shown you it is possible to assign an input pin to each home switch, one per axis. You could in fact assign limit
switches individually also, two per axis but you would run out of available pins with the 540. The method I adopted largely because it
seemed easy to understand at the time was to have one home switch per axis, one Estop and one limit switch input for a total of 5 inputs.
I was using a single PP and BoB at the time and so 5 input was all I had and if I'm not mistaken the 540 has the same limitation.

I bought and fitted three top quality roller plunger microswitches and fitted one to each axis and assigned one input each as a home switch.
Given that your home switches set the zero machine reference of your machine at each turn on it makes sense to use the best and most
repeatable quality switches/sensors to establish it. Limit switches are fitted at the end of all three axes, one at each end for 6 switches.
They are all wired normally closed and in series and assigned to just one input. If any one limit switch goes open the machine faults out
and you will have to manually bring the machine back into bounds before you can reset it. Because all of the limit switches are combined
Mach cant tell which axis is out of bounds nor can it tell which direction triggered the limit. You will have to inspect the machine and decide
how to handle each 'out of bounds' excursion.

You will no doubt have read that you can combine home and limit switches and in interests of saving inputs and the number of switches
many do. When homing the machine temporarily looks to the limit switch assigned to the axis being homed as home switch. If any of the
limit switch 'string' opens then Mach will interpret that event as home switch for the axis being homed. There could be mistakes, for instance
if a Y axis limit switch was accidentally triggered while Mach was trying to home the X axis then homing is compromised and a later crash
or out of bounds error likely result. Having said that lots of people do it this way without problem. I would still recommend that the switches
which will double as home switches be good units to achieve best repeatability.

Craig

7046

General Mach Discussion / Re: how can I increase security?

« on: May 03, 2017, 06:53:36 AM »

Hi,
letting children play with active CNC equipment is the stuff of nightmares....making the machine inert in a manner that they can't
overcome is necessary if you believe it possible that they might try.

While a child, say eight years or less maybe at risk I wouldn't mind betting older 'kids' would take to CNC no trouble, in fact the reason
for keeping them off the machine is to stop them making me look bad!

Save your safety procedures for yourself, if you think some idea will prevent YOU from getting hurt, go for it. Any other bugger playing
with my machine will be shot by me. Survivors will be shot again.

Craig

7047

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Cannot set Machine coordinates G54 to 0.00 in the offset tab!!

« on: May 01, 2017, 06:57:07 AM »

Hi,
have a look on the Machine Diagnostics tab. Sometimes a G92 offset becomes active and screws your work offsets up.

Craig

7048

General Mach Discussion / Re: Mach3 + USBSmoothstepper + G540 VFD 10v output?

« on: April 24, 2017, 02:55:46 PM »

Hi,
the power supply for the USB Smoothstepper is 5V. How is it expected to produce a 0-10V output?

Either accept the 0-5V output available from the board or use external circuitry to generate the voltage you require.
One possibility is an opamp with at least a 10V supply. You could use a bit of AC trickery and make a voltage doubler.

Craig

7049

General Mach Discussion / Re: Compatibility Test Diagnostics Failed !

« on: April 24, 2017, 07:40:32 AM »

Hi,
thinking a little more about the decisions/choices you might make.....My previous post suggests that unless you have a pressing need
for speed or resolution just about any of the boards will work, I mean they're all faster than Mach3 PP.

What may be worth considering is analogue IO. Most boards will either on their own or in co-operation with the BOB produce an analogue
voltage from a PWM signal, just the thing for speed control of a VFD for instance. I note that the PoKeys 57E has an A to D built in and so
can produce a digital signal from an external voltage and transmit the digital value back to the PC over TCP/IP. Is that clever or what!
PoKeys boards have their origins in data collection/transmission and it comes naturally to them. Most of the other boards, at least in the cheap
end of the market, can't match it.

I have migrated to Mach4 and I will retain my ESS as my active motion controller but am planning to add a 57E as an IO board, but best of
both worlds and enuf IO to shake a stick at!

Craig

7050

General Mach Discussion / Re: Compatibility Test Diagnostics Failed !

« on: April 24, 2017, 07:21:54 AM »

Hi,
reading spec sheets can be confusing and is easy to misinterpret things. All of the boards I've mentioned have strengths and
weaknesses but also have thousands of satisfied customers. If any of their products didn't work we would know already.
Even a board with a particular weakness is still likely to be entirely adequate for most purposes.

The potential pulse rate is an example.

If you recall Mach3s native kernel speed is 25kHz, ie 25000 pulses per second. A two phase stepper with 8 microsteps per fullstep,
ie 1600 steps per revolution will spin at 15.625 revs per second or 937.5 rpm when driven by 25000 pulses per second, probably
adequate for our purposes. The same stepper operated with 64 microsteps per fullstep will spin at 117 rpm. The only way to make it
go any faster is to supply more pulses per second or reduce the resolution.

Commonly available servos have 10,000 count per rev encoders. To spin a servo at its max speed, 5000 rpm say, without resorting to
electronic gearing requires a pulse stream of 833kHz! An ordinary parallel port is WAY,WAY too slow, in fact most of the controllers you're
looking at will struggle to keep up.

The question you need to ask is 'do I want/need medium-high resolution servos/encoders/stepper drives?'. If you do the you're going to be
looking at pretty high spec equipment. Most hobby level equipment doesn't require that level of resolution/speed and/or a suitable compromise
can be reached and yet still deliver great results.

Craig