Messages

41

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: 4612 Build

« on: March 07, 2021, 07:48:57 AM »

You were right about the Simulator, the machine now does talk to the ESS.

However, there's still a problem, albeit a different one.

Now I'm finding that the machine won't move smoothly, it keeps pausing during the moves. I've enabled the warning if the 'Show Sotware Velocity FIFO Ran Dry Msgs'.
I've just run a trivial program to mover between two points after starting the spindle. It paused 8 times during those moves. When it finished, it reported 3 errors which makes no sense.
If I click Cycle Start and then immediately stop it before any moves at all, it reported 4 errors. I don't think this reporting feature works.

Another bizarre thing, is that when I go back to my original profile, that now single steps correctly! In other words, it was always one step behind before, and now, having run this new profile, it single steps and stays in synch!!! Something clearly gets saved in a common area that's shared between profiles that's changed the behaviour. It's very odd.

42

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: 4612 Build

« on: March 07, 2021, 07:05:40 AM »

Ok, just to check the suggestions off point by point...

I hadn't realised the the ESS had to be selected in the Select Motion Device, that's fixed it.
The ESS is ticked as enabled in the Mach4 config plugins tab
The ESS plugin appears in the Configure>Plugins dropdown list
When I click on it is when I get the dialog box saying there's no connection.
I've run the Warp9Tech Design - SCU application and applied the defaults from File>Windows performance tuning.

Many thanks for your help

43

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: 4612 Build

« on: March 07, 2021, 06:30:45 AM »

Many thanks for all of that advice, I'll check through it all. I just assumed that if one profile worked and another doesn't, it was a problem with the profile that didn't. I don't know what any profile contains or how one differs from another.

Nothing else is different on the PC, I just select a different profile from the loader. One connects to the ESS, the other doesn't.

44

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: 4612 Build

« on: March 07, 2021, 05:40:43 AM »

Having had so many issues with my existing profile and this latest build, I thought I'd better try it with the supplied default Mach4Mill profile.
I've set up all of the configurations in Mach4 and the ESS but it comes up with the following error when I go to edit the ESS plugin...

Warning! Not connected to the ESS board

I'm running the following...
Mach4 V4.2.0.4612 ESS V270 won't connect to the ESS

I know the ESS works because I can switch back to my original profile and it does connect, so this is clearly not a hardware issue.

Just a few things worth noting because they may have some bearing on the issue.

1) Ever since I've used Mach4, regardless of the previous version and the version of the plugin, I've noticed that sometimes the splash screen for the ESS comes up, immediately followed by Mach4 exiting. Sometimes this happens two or three times before Mach4 starts properely and loads the screen.
2) That doesn't happen with this latest build. The Warp V270 spash screen flashes up and it always completes the boot. However, the control doesn't enable, so it doesn't look like the ESS is communicating, even though there's no error message.
3) It's only when you go to explicitly configure the plugin that it tells you that it's not connected.

So my guess is that right at the very start of the boot process of Mach4, there's an attempt to connect to the plugin, and that fails, even though it doesn't say so.
I notice that there's definitely a longer pause of about 6 seconds when the Warp V270 spash screen shows when it's loading my original profile.
When I boot it with the default profile, the Warp V270 spash screen only shows for about 2 seconds, so something is clearly very different about what's happening when it starts up.

Any ideas, because at the moment it's unusable with the default profile because it's clearly not connecting to the ESS

45

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: 4612 Build

« on: March 05, 2021, 11:48:50 AM »

I've also noticed that when I interrupt a program using the Stop button and then go to zero the DRO, the DRO doesn't clear until I disable the servos and re-enable them again.
I've just checked this, and it happens every time. If I don't disable the drive, the DRO clear doesn't work, but the jogs do. They appear to be correct, as if the clear button wasn't pressed. However, when the drive is disabled, the DRO jumps as if it was retrospectively applying the zero.
So it looks like the DRO does actually get cleared, but the display doesn't reflect that until the drives are disabled.

46

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: 4612 Build

« on: March 05, 2021, 09:32:38 AM »

No problem, here it is again. I had to rename it because the system says it already has a file of that name.
I'm using V270 for the ESS. Everything worked fine with Mach 4 V4.2.0.3804 ESS V231 but this problem and the issue with the Single Step being out of sync have been introduced by this version.
I have both feed hold and stop on the control panel. I believe the Hold also is slow to react with this version but I'll have to check.

I don't understand why the profile I'm using shows these issues. Surely this fundamental behaviour is controlled by the core software, not by the profile?

47

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: 4612 Build

« on: March 04, 2021, 09:54:32 AM »

I've also noticed that Mach4 no longer instantly responds to the Stop button. It takes a full second before anything happens. This needs looking into because when you want it to stop, you want it to stop now, not some time later. Hitting the emergency stop button loses position, so I try to avoid using that unless absolutely necessary.

48

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: 4612 Build

« on: March 03, 2021, 07:11:42 PM »

You already have my profile that exhibits this problem. It was the same with the 3804 build.

It's not about restarting Mach, it's when you exit config and then re-enable the drives without exiting Mach.

If you change say the backlash compensation value when you're in Metric, then exit, enable the drive and step 1mm, it will step 1". It does it for other things too, but I know this definitely is wrong because I've adjusted the backlash values in the last couple of days and it happened then.

I'm only using Metric, never Imperial. That's what makes it dangerous, you don't expect it to change from Metric when you exit the config. It really shouldn't do that. There must be something in the code that defaults to Imperial somewhere on exit, or when you edit the values.

49

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: 4612 Build

« on: March 03, 2021, 08:31:11 AM »

Just a reminder that there is still a bug in the Configuration that defaults back to Imperial measurements when you exit. This is dangerous since things like single stepping moves 25.4 times more than you expect!
At the moment you have to remember to exit Mach and restart every time you change anything in the config else you can get caught out and crash the machine. This really needs addresssing in my opinion.
Why does it override the setting in the Config anyway? That makes no sense.

50

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Input assignments lost when Mach4 closes with debug report

« on: February 25, 2021, 12:00:44 PM »

I'm copying this question and response from Andy on the Warp9 forum...

"I don't understand why the ESS plugin needs to write something to the INI file every time it exits. Again this morning the ESS has forgotten all of the input pin assignments. I also can't see why only those are affected."

Reply..

"Because we need to save information from this run to the file, so we have it next time when we start up.

It is not that the ESS is forgetting, it is that Mach4 is crashing during shut down. Either your PC is not stable, Mach4 is corrupted, or something else is happening that is causing Mach4 to crash before it is fully shutting down own it's own. This is not a normal situation, because my OEMs are not reporting it and I have not heard this from other people in the forums."

Frankly this doesn't ring true to me. It's frustrating to have to bounce this back and forth without someone owning the issue. I can't see why the ESS needs to save anything between sessions. Even if it does, why do only the Input Assignments get corrupted?
They say that Mach4 is crashing on exit, but it actually does an orderly exit, even though it does throw a debeug report. Crashing in my opinion is an unexpected termination of a program, and Mach4 works absolutely fine, even during the exit and displaying of the report.

Can someone please figure this out, it's untenable having to re-enter pin assignments every time I use the machine