Messages

511

General Mach Discussion / Re: I/O card help

« on: February 09, 2017, 10:48:31 AM »

tweakie and Gerry,  thanks for your help,

I can code in cobol, fortran, C, C++ and Oject Pascal, but I can't read Sanskrit, Hieroglyphics or Schematics!   

Finally risked creating some blue smoke and connected the FP48 PW IN +V to the I0+, Connected another wire to the PW IN 0V to one of the probe wires and then connected the
other probe wire to the I0 -.  No smoke!  I0 is pin 13 so set Mach3 probe to port2(smooth stepper 2nd 25 pin)pin 13 active low.  When probe is tripped the probe LED comes on and the Mach3 probe LED lights as well.

I hate circuits, they make me feel stupid.

Thank you guys for your patience. 

RT

512

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Connecting to Mach4

« on: February 07, 2017, 12:10:26 PM »

Good morning Craig,

Yes it is a personalized copy, plus a lot more.  What wasn't shown was that one of the icons on the top starts another application with several tabbed notebook pages with probably a hundred fields to do various tasks that I use in making bamboo fly rods, reel seats and other hardware.  When I started this project altering any screen set in mach3 required using screen4 (nick named scream4 since it crashed often and lost all of the changes you made) require bitmaps for everything visual and wasn't sizable.  It would have taken ten times as long to develop the screens in Mach3.  My modules are all sizable, can be hidden or shown, and buttons customizeable without closing down and reopening the app like you have to do even now in Mach4.  The MDI is always available, the Gcode is run a line at a time so I didn't have to put in a bunch of while isMoving Wend statements.  I could load and unload a sets of buttons with predefined Gcode or scripts (think probing), create leds and user DROs to show variable values on the fly which was great for testing scripts.  Too many more benefits to name here.    

Mach4 has certainly gone a long way to eliminate some of the shortcomings especially in screen set development and making it event driven like mine.  Yes, I could now create lua panels to replicate what I have but that is redundant, would take 100's of hours to design and code and should not be necessary.

A plugin could be made to work but my reading of the Mach4 core API you must be a 'licensed developer' to be able to install one.

I could write my database to a csv file and load that data but then any changes made to the database requires that I export the data for each change.  That's bad system management, just asking for trouble.  I can create a dll that a lua script should be able to load and call functions in the dll, I haven't gone down that raod yet, I would rather use what I have already poured hundreds of hours of time into by just being able to instantiate a COM interface to Mach4 and tell it to run a file.  

And this is just a hobby!

513

General Mach Discussion / Re: I/O card help

« on: February 06, 2017, 12:56:58 PM »

Craig and Tweakie, thanks for taking time to take a look at this for me.

Craig, I think this board is made at forest city electronics.  It is the only web presence I could find.  The unit was put together by Bob Campbell Designs.

Tweakie, that Drawing reminds me of lot of those I saw on temples a few years ago in Luxor Egypt!

I see that the photo came in upside down so my references are incorrect.  After removing the top left wires the lettering reads PW In with +V and 0V above it and I get 12 volts accross them.  

I am trying to install this probe:

http://www.wildhorse-innovations.com/index.php?_a=viewProd&productId=80

It takes 3-24 volts.  As you can see in the photo the +5V led is lit.  Not sure what that means.  Can I tap off that for current?

TIA

514

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Connecting to Mach4

« on: February 06, 2017, 11:34:09 AM »

Craig,  thank you for taking time to help with this question.

I program mostly in Delphi Object Pascal and have written a few apps that access Mach3 and control it externally.  If you have time to waste:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ky-mlYa3aeQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vT_bsP1V3O4

I have a database that I draw off of to create some parts.  It would be simply for me to write an app that generates the gcode and then programmatically tell mach to load and run that file.  Mach4, afaik, does not expose a com interface at this time.  I was wondering if some other tool or sdk is available.

Thanks,

RT

515

General Mach Discussion / Re: Lathe question

« on: February 06, 2017, 11:11:27 AM »

Rich, thanks for taking the time to put this write up together.

I am not one to wait around very long so I made a threading tool and made the 1/2-13 internal thread using the wizard in a standard fashion.  Just for giggles and grins I also tried using the wizard with reversed starting point, left to right, threading tool on the near side of the bore and the threads came out the same as the first.

When I first downloaded Scott's wizard there were several entry boxes with no labels.  After scouring the support site I found an updated version and reinstalled it.  The missing bitmaps were there and made sense of the entry boxes.  It also had a word document "Read Me 1st.doc" that in item 12 he made the reverse comment.

Thanks again for the write up, your posts have been most helpful to read.

RT

516

Mach4 General Discussion / Connecting to Mach4

« on: February 05, 2017, 04:39:51 PM »

Does anyone have an example of an application connecting to Mach4?  Like telling Mach4 to load a gcode file?

TIA

RT

517

General Mach Discussion / I/O card help

« on: February 05, 2017, 04:13:05 PM »

I am electronically challenged so please be kind.

I bought a CNC control box several years ago for my DIY gantry style mill. It has a smooth stepper, soundLogic combo board and a FP-48 I/O board controlled by Mach3. The SoundLogic board inputs are totally used and connects to the Smooth Stepper port 1. I have attached a picture of the FP48 card. The db25 cable goes to port2 of the smooth stepper and the Q0 and Q1 control relays to my water pump and dust collector and work well. The two wires on the bottom right I believe are pulse width management wires to another card that sends signals to my VFD.

I want to hook up a probe for touch off. I have connected to I0 (lower right hand corner) a red an black wire. When I put a voltmeter on they register nothing. When I test for continuity it stays at 1. Can anyone tell my how I should be wiring this? Do I need jumper pins in J3 or J4 or ? I have asked the person who put this together but he has no clue what to do even though the box has worked flawlessly for several years and is well put together. Like I said I am an electronic idiot.

TIA

RT

518

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Mach 4 some bugs - Help me.

« on: February 03, 2017, 04:45:28 PM »

For mach4:

https://www.machsupport.com/forum/index.php?board=94.0

Daz also has a youtube channel you can subscribe to.

519

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Mach 4 some bugs - Help me.

« on: February 03, 2017, 11:44:31 AM »

Daz, you are the man!

Thanks for all of the support you have given here and love your videos both on Mach and you new builds. Looking forward to more.

520

General Mach Discussion / Lathe question

« on: February 03, 2017, 11:14:32 AM »

I was looking at Soctt's threading wizard since I now have a need to do a ½-13 left handed internal thread.  Seems like it is what I am looking for, but, as I was reading the readme file he made the comment that If you swapped the start and end points you could do reverse threading.  Not being an experienced machinist I somehow imagined that this produces the same result as left handed threading.  What/is there a difference between reverse and left hand threading?

Thanks,

Ralph Tuttle