Machsupport Forum

Mach Discussion => General Mach Discussion => Topic started by: MHJ on August 23, 2010, 09:31:12 AM

Title: Spindle DRO not working in Mach3 Turn
Post by: MHJ on August 23, 2010, 09:31:12 AM
Hello !
 Mach3 Turn R3.042.040 licenced. Homann Digispeed, Emerson Commander SK VFD. Homann MB02 V6 BOBs.
.375" slot on 7.5" disc
Spindle motor output checked
PWM checked
PWM base frequency 1000
Min PWM 0
Spindle speed averaging checked
Index enabled on port 1 pin 15, active high.
Voltage output from opto with slot at the sensor is 4.92v

At any speed above 100, the Spindle true DRO shows either 13 or 14, below that it shows 0. I've tried the Index debounce at many values between 0 and 1000, to no avail. Can anyone please tell me what's going on here, before I go raving mad? (or madder, some would say).
Regards,
John
Title: Re: Spindle DRO not working in Mach3 Turn
Post by: Hood on August 23, 2010, 01:25:20 PM
Are you commanding a M3/M4 ?
Try enabling the spindle relays even if they are to imaginary outputs.

Hood
Title: Re: Spindle DRO not working in Mach3 Turn
Post by: MHJ on August 23, 2010, 03:56:51 PM
Hood, thanks for taking the time to reply,
Spindle relay IS in place, to the Homann Digispeed, as follows:
Enable port 2 pin 17
Output 1 to relay on Digispeed port 2, pin 16 (cw)
Typing M3 S100 in the MDI box turns on the VFD and I have 100 rpm at the spindle. Pressing the spindle start button with 100 entered in the speed select box has exactly the same result. (other speeds selected give different results at the spindle, but that's another issue)
Over the last 2 days I've tried moving the spindle index pin to other inputs (on both bobs), with exactly the same result..... no or innacurate spindle true DRO.
Regards,
Baffled, UK.
Title: Re: Spindle DRO not working in Mach3 Turn
Post by: Hood on August 23, 2010, 04:25:45 PM
Can you attach your xml and I will see if I can find a problem.

Hood
Title: Re: Spindle DRO not working in Mach3 Turn
Post by: RICH on August 23, 2010, 05:24:06 PM
I will remark that you should set rpm  at a desired / fixed rpm manualy when threading.
The PWM will cause problems as it fights Mach Turns ability to vary the feedrate with a change in rpm.

RICH
Title: Re: Spindle DRO not working in Mach3 Turn
Post by: MHJ on August 24, 2010, 09:52:32 AM
Hello Hood.

XML attached.

Since I last posted I have re-installed Mach3 and sorted the speed bother I was having, but the Spindle true problem remains.

Rich,
yes I've read your threading guide, a nice bit of work if I might say so, hope you got well paid for it. Also that there will soon be a revision of Mach3 for us lowly 2 axis folk, do you have any idea when that might be?

Regards,
John.
Title: Re: Spindle DRO not working in Mach3 Turn
Post by: Hood on August 24, 2010, 10:01:43 AM
Also that there will soon be a revision of Mach3 for us lowly 2 axis folk, do you have any idea when that might be?

Regards,
John.

Some time in the next few months I was told by Brian, only prob was that was well over a year ago so looks like the start of the "next few months" period has not started yet ;D
Hood
Title: Re: Spindle DRO not working in Mach3 Turn
Post by: Hood on August 24, 2010, 10:22:36 AM
Seems to be fine as far as I can see, is there any way you can scope the input to the port from the index to see if its getting through the BOB ok?

Hood
Title: Re: Spindle DRO not working in Mach3 Turn
Post by: MHJ on August 24, 2010, 10:52:22 AM
I regret that I have no scope, but I do know that 4.92v is getting from the index to the bob and I can see the led on the bob flashing in sync with the disc rotating....at low revs of course.
In the meantime, thanks for looking at the XML, it's appreciated.
I'll see if I can borrow a scope, together with somebody to drive it !
Regards,
John.
Title: Re: Spindle DRO not working in Mach3 Turn
Post by: Hood on August 24, 2010, 11:05:18 AM
Do you see the index pulse LED on the diags page when going slow?

Hood
Title: Re: Spindle DRO not working in Mach3 Turn
Post by: MHJ on August 24, 2010, 11:17:02 AM
Yes I do, erratically at 4 - 7 sec intervals at 100rpm, whereas the led on the input pin of the bob is flashing in sync.
Title: Re: Spindle DRO not working in Mach3 Turn
Post by: Hood on August 24, 2010, 11:31:33 AM
Just looked again and see you have an index debounce of 100, set that to zero and it may help.

Hood
Title: Re: Spindle DRO not working in Mach3 Turn
Post by: MHJ on August 24, 2010, 11:44:18 AM
 index deb0unce now at 0 and the dro is now constantly changing from about 35000 to 1100
Title: Re: Spindle DRO not working in Mach3 Turn
Post by: Hood on August 24, 2010, 11:53:29 AM
try increasing a bit then and see if it helps, all my machines were zero on index debounce when using the PP but maybe you have a bit more noise.
Hood
Title: Re: Spindle DRO not working in Mach3 Turn
Post by: MHJ on September 01, 2010, 08:38:42 AM
UPDATE:

I have discovered what appears to be the source of the problem.
The second parallel port (Moschip 9865) has around 3.5v on several of the pins, without any program accessing that port. This only came to light (huge pun intended) when yesterday evening the tube above the lathe failed and I could see that the LEDs on the Homann BOBs were glowing very faintly...yet the power supply to them was not energised. I disconnected the LPT2 plug and the leds all went out.
These parallel ports are, as far as I know, the same as sold by CNC4PC, (I sourced mine here in the UK) and I have contacted Moschip to see if there is a way to configure this port so that there is no voltage on it when no data flow is present.
I moved the index pulse over to LPT1 pin 15 and hey presto! spindle true dro is working. I'll report the Moschip answer, as and when I have it, unless any of you Gurus already know what can be done !!!!
Thanks for all your input so far,
John.
Title: Re: Spindle DRO not working in Mach3 Turn
Post by: Hood on September 01, 2010, 09:05:53 AM
Is there any way you can connect the index direct to the port rather than going through a bob?
Hood
Title: Re: Spindle DRO not working in Mach3 Turn
Post by: MHJ on September 02, 2010, 10:18:00 AM
Hello Hood,

I don't think so.......

But I have heard back from the Moschip people:

"To show 0V on parallel port pins, parallel port transceiver need to be used which is added in most of desktop Machines.
Use of Parallel port transceiver is optional, in case of MCS9865 – parallel port, board manufacturer do not prefer to use parallel port transceiver (Ex: SN74LVCE161284)  to show 0V when parallel port is not in use."

So what I need now is a parallel port card which has this chip (or an equivalent) on it.

Ho Hum eh? Regards, John.


Title: Re: Spindle DRO not working in Mach3 Turn
Post by: simpson36 on September 03, 2010, 12:29:19 PM
From the FWIW department, I have some similar hardware and had similar problems.

I am using a Roswell dual port PCI add in card. Not sure which one at the moment , but it uses a MOS chip. I posted the exact card model here a while back. Note that the drivers that came with the card would NOT work with Mach, but the drivers from the MOS site (for the specific chip on the card) work perfectly.

I have a CNC4PC BOB (G1) and also the Homann BOB that you are using. I was never able to get the Speed DRO to work with the Homann board. I reported this to Peter early on, but never got any response. The DRO works fine with no changes other than move the wire to the CNC4PC BOB . . which has a special 'high speed' input for that purpose.

Hope this helps you. 
Title: Re: Spindle DRO not working in Mach3 Turn
Post by: RICH on September 04, 2010, 08:13:56 AM
Quote
drivers that came with the card would NOT work with Mach, but the drivers from the MOS site (for the specific chip on the card) work perfectly.


Thanks Simpson, as i had the same problems with a few cards a long time ago. The drivers first tried were on the installation disc and followed the instructions. Actualy someone  sent me a driver that worked. Just should not need to do this kind of stuff.
My answer to this kind of stuff goes like this:
Buy the card but make an agreement ( before purchasing it "localy ") that full refund will be given or the seller will make it work,
If they won't do that ...........walk away and go somewhere else.

RICH
Title: Re: Spindle DRO not working in Mach3 Turn
Post by: MHJ on September 05, 2010, 08:56:12 AM
Thank you all for taking the time to add to this enquiry.

I feel that soon I will be in a Home For Distressed Machinery Retro-fitters. I have considerably less hair than before and I've smoked more fags in the last fortnight than in the last six months.
(just to clarify that last statement; "smoking fags" if you are East of the 45th parallel refers to the consumption of cigarettes and not some sort of mass-murder, or worse.)
I've reinstalled LPT2, with the correct drivers, port address is still 1040, and pins 2-9 as inputs box is checked. I've checked in BIOS and in hardware devices, all appears OK. On the LPT2 Homann MB02-V6 board, the jumper is in the correct position for pins 2-9 to be inputs, but these are not seen by Mach3. I changed over the MB-02 LPT1 to LPT2 and vice-versa, still no inputs seen on pins 2-9. The normal inputs/outputs work on both BOBs and are seen by Mach3, so I see no issues there.
So is the lack of inputs 2-9 due to the LPT2 card or the Homann BOB? Or a combination of the two?
Well, signals on pins 2-9 are going down the LPT2 cable and reaching the computer, I can see these with my multimeter, so the BOB can be ruled out.

I contacted these people here in the UK: http://www.brainboxesstore.com/product_details_25.htm  
One of their hardware Engineers got interested in my enquiry and very kindly put one of their cards on an oscilloscope, checked all the I/O's and here's what he said:
"I think it is very likely that the UC-146 will meet his requirements. The chip we use for the UC cards drives pins 2-9 (the data pins) of the LPT port low at reset, and all PCI-compliant motherboards hold the PCI slots in a reset state during power-up.  So by design, the UC-card LPT ports operate in the way he requires. I did some oscilloscope measurements with a UC-146 card, and I did find that there was a small glitch on these pins at startup: there was a pulse of up to 0.88V lasting for 360us.  This is probably occurring as the power to the card ramps up, and has to reach a certain point before the logic in the chip starts working and drives the signals low.  The pulse length may vary depending on the host PC, but I guess it would not get much higher in voltage. When I set the 'scope to trigger at 1.0V, it did not trigger on any of the pins 2-9 at power-up. That covers the behaviour of the hardware, but might the Windows device driver for the LPT port cause the pins to change?  I haven't tested this, but I doubt it because we use the standard Microsoft device driver for our LPT ports, and I get the impression that the customer is already using a standard LPT port (which will use the same driver) without problems."

These cards are not cheap at 57GBP + tax+ shipping, but if it preserves what is left of my sanity I'll be more than happy.........watch this space.

 


Title: Re: Spindle DRO not working in Mach3 Turn
Post by: simpson36 on September 06, 2010, 04:49:59 AM
US$15

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16815166007&cm_re=parallel_port_card-_-15-166-007-_-Product
Title: Re: Spindle DRO not working in Mach3 Turn
Post by: MHJ on September 24, 2010, 06:57:49 AM
Hello.

I'm pleased to say that the brainboxes UC-146 for a second parallel port worked straight away. Costly, but effective and I can cope with that (just).

All I have to do now is get a full 10v out of the Homann Digispeed to get full revs on the spindle.......at the moment I can only get a maximum of 8.2v..

Thanks to all who have contributed and Mr. Simpson, if you're reading this, I will get one of those cards you mentioned and try it out. I've read a lot of your posts and it seems to me that you have successfully negotiated a number of steep learning curves!

Regards,
John.
Title: Re: Spindle DRO not working in Mach3 Turn
Post by: WoodyCam on October 17, 2010, 05:02:54 PM
I have a similar problem but for a different reason perhaps. I have a simple, single LPT set up with a home made breakout board and a single index pulse. With Mach3 R3.042.020 Turn, this works fine and I see a stable and accurate spindle speed from 50 to 2000rpm and I can thread well (given the known limitations of this version).

However, I updated to Mach3 R3.042.040 for the threading corrections and now I have no spindle speed in the DRO or in the Turn Diagnostics. Back to version 020 and its fine. I've tried to read up on this and read Rich's pdf but can't see where I've got it wrong.

I know there have been quite a few changes between vn 020 and vn 040, can anyone help me with why I would loose spindle speed? Is there a setting or approach I need to change to get this working? I can see the index pulse in diagnostics when I turn the spindle by hand but over 50rpm its gone. I've tried with turn diags enabled and without, which made no difference.

Is the new driver approach compatible with Win2000 and 1GHz P4 machine? Everything else seems fine and Mill works great as does my MPG with Turn and Mill at vn 040, just no Speed reading and presumably, no threading!

Thanks,

Woody.
Title: Re: Spindle DRO not working in Mach3 Turn
Post by: Hood on October 17, 2010, 05:08:35 PM
Have you got any Index Debounce set?
Also presume you are using Index and not Timing for the input?
You may need to also call aM3 or M4 if you are not already doing so.
Hood
Title: Re: Spindle DRO not working in Mach3 Turn
Post by: RICH on October 17, 2010, 06:55:55 PM
Quote
I've tried with turn diags enabled


The turn diagnostics should not be used in version .032 and above, so un-enable the plug-in.

Like Hood replied, you need to turn the spindle on as that tells  Mach to imeadiately start looking for the true rpm from an index pulse.
Make sure you do not have timing enabled. It dosen't work after .032 and is not better than a single index. The thread changes were implemented in 3.042.032 and .033 took care of a negative dro rpm  problem for computers with a fast bus speed.

I use 10 for  the index debounce and 600 for the interval. You may need to set yours to something different.

RICH