Messages

181

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Mach4 Printer Port Discussions

« on: August 31, 2015, 11:33:30 AM »

Hi:

  It may be thinking its done. Before yu home, are the home leds on the diags page lit up? Do they light up when you press a home switch?

Art

182

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Mach4 Printer Port Discussions

« on: August 26, 2015, 09:17:06 PM »

Tom:

 Glad to hear. Check your homing switches are not set to inverted in mach4. They must only be inverted in Darwin if needs be. Look to the error buffer
as Darwin in debug moe will send messages to show what steps its doing in homing.

Art

183

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Mach4 Printer Port Discussions

« on: August 25, 2015, 09:10:59 PM »

Hi Tom:

  Its probably because I switched to Win7 and compile it now under VS2013. Down the VCRedistX86 for vs2013 from microsoft. Run that and I think
the problem will go away.

Thx
Art

184

Show"N"Tell ( Your Machines) / Re: The Laser Project.

« on: August 02, 2015, 07:09:48 AM »

oops, sorry guys, wrong thread for that last reponce.

Art

185

Show"N"Tell ( Your Machines) / Re: The Laser Project.

« on: August 02, 2015, 07:08:59 AM »

Hi:

   I suspect it would, but I m no longer persuing this as a viable project in favour of making a controller to do it as a native
function. While my arduino controls my laser great in XP under Darwin, Im working on Auggie, an augmented Gcode controller
specifically designed for lasers and impact engravers as I no longer use XP myself.
   More will be published on this by end of summer. This project will stay here for those that wish to stay in XP and run it, but
for most I think XP and printer ports are going away, so the Auggie project will replace this one.

Art

186

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Mach4 Printer Port Discussions

« on: July 29, 2015, 10:29:27 AM »

Hi:

  Makes no difference to the machine. When you use the slider and then exit the wizard, Mach4 stores the value in the machine.ini profile under [Darwin]
as ( Im pretty sure ) "Pulse Freq". TO be clear, this means you have selected config/plugins, then pressed config on Darwin. The pulse screen slider is then changed to 20,000 and you exit. This should be permanent unless changed due to the entry in the machine.ini for [Darwin] under "Frequency"

  As it starts up it runs this line
mcProfileGetInt(m_cid , "Darwin", "Frequency", &rval, 25000);, so it defaults to 25K if nothing is stored.

  So when you exit it should then read 20000. It sounds liek for some reason your configs arent saving.

Art

187

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Mach4 Printer Port Discussions

« on: July 29, 2015, 08:09:33 AM »

Hi Ben:

   Im afraid the only advice I can give is to delete the installation and try again fresh. I tested this morning with
those versions, licensed and unlicensed, and the driver worked fine, the pulse rate saved, and motion was proper.

  Im thinking the only thing that coudl screw you up that way, is if the profiles are screwed up somehow. It seems to be
an inssue with the installation of Mach4 rather than a darwin issue.
Sorry, wish I coudl advise better..

Art

188

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Mach4 Printer Port Discussions

« on: July 28, 2015, 11:35:01 PM »

Hi:

  You should get full motion with your testing. First, an OutofBounds error mens the steps/unit is too high, which makes sense if its forgetting its
settings. Never set it up from the drivertest, only from within mach4. Try this with just frequency, set it to 30K or whatever, then exit. Restart mach4 and go back and look, is it still 30K? If so continue, if not, let me know. We'll see if we can figure out why..

Art

189

General Mach Discussion / Re: IF you had a NEW controller whta would it do/not do ?

« on: July 21, 2015, 09:28:15 PM »

Gary:

   I guess I forget that most of you dont really know whats under the bonnet. Smoothsteppers, printer ports, most controllers are fed motion in waypoints. The printer port was fed 200uS points, the rest are almost all 1ms waypoints. So the controller, m3, m4, linux..whatever, take in the Gcode, they hold the state engine which is the guts of cnc. They interpret the Gcode , control the various states, then plan the trajectory to 1ms waypoints.
  Motion engines are told whats up for the next 2 seconds or so, the controller makes sure this 2  seconds is extended as it depletes. The controller
takes care of acceleration, mixing speeds between axis, maximum and mixed velocities , offsetting, and toolpath displays. Scripting and configuration as well.
   Engines take the waypoint data, and are programmed to take a step count for each millisecond of motion, how many steps each axis takes in that ms
determines end velocity and such. So jerk constraints,acceleration curves and  constant velocity and so on are computed by the millisend and continuously sent to the device. Its all a complex dance of internal motion before the motion engine gets sent its data. How smooth the motion is, how complex the logic and scripting can be, thats all controller, the actual steps are made by the engine.

    Im not saying the controller is more important than the engine, there is a certain chicken and egg flavour there.. I just wanted to clear up
that the engine itself doesnt even come close as yet to replacing the controller. Its been tried many times to do so, to have usb sticks with the programs on them plugged into a board and away you go.. .. its always failed, for various reasons. That day IS coming, but it isnt here quite yet..

  Over the years Ive been told many times by people that hardware will replace the controller, the ncPod, the "Brain", and a few others had tried while I was still making Mach3. They all had truly planned to do so.. but its only when you try to actually write a controller you find just how vastly complicated
it truly is. Mach4 was supposed to be ready years ago, and I suspect theres a few humbled ego's from the experience of bringing it to where it is today.
    Mach3 is far from perfect, but replacing it has proven a hurculean task.. which when you consider its age..is a real testement to its abilities, and the large group of contributers to its growth.

  
Art
 

Art

190

General Mach Discussion / Re: IF you had a NEW controller whta would it do/not do ?

« on: July 20, 2015, 09:45:15 PM »

>> I am not really sure that Mach 3 or Mach 4 needs to be much more than the HMI for the iron

  I suspect you underestimate just how much M3 is doing and overestimate how much the smoothstepper is doing. The smoothstepper is a 6 channel organ, m3
is the orchestra, the meistro and the music interpreter. There is far more to it behind the scenes than most realize, even if you stripped out the macros
and many other things. Not that it might not get there someday, but controllers still perform a very important function in the process....

Art