Machsupport Forum
Mach Discussion => General Mach Discussion => Topic started by: English James on November 24, 2011, 06:54:31 AM
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Hi,
Had a Power cut while Mach 3 was open and the PC switched off suddenly. When started back up the home and fixture position was different. Also the X axis has switched, i.e. when jogging X go's in the opposite direction now. Also I have a 'Normal Condition' LED flashing on the Home Page ( when clicked it says 'Axis are not re-fed to normal position').
Any help or suggestions of how I get back to normality greatly appreciated. I am a newbee and only in my first few days of Mach 3.
James
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Swap the Dir of the axis either on Ports and Pins Motor Ouputs page by changing the active state of the Dir pin or you can go to Config menu then Homng and limits and change the reversed to the opposite of what it is.
Abnormal condition is nothing to worry about, its just saying you have not homed the machine, so just press RefAll and it will stop.
Hood
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Thanks Hood. Tried it both ways and they both changed the direction fine. I now have the Home position set back to the cross hairs on the 'Table view'. All back up and running, thanks! James
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there are backups of the xml file, you can try going to operator and restore a backup from a few starts ago.
Ohhh and a UPS is a good thing.
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DHL are rubbish, and PARCEL FORCE ;)
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Hi,
Had a Power cut while Mach 3 was open and the PC switched off suddenly. When started back up the home and fixture position was different. Also the X axis has switched, i.e. when jogging X go's in the opposite direction now. Also I have a 'Normal Condition' LED flashing on the Home Page ( when clicked it says 'Axis are not re-fed to normal position').
I had exactly the same problem after a power cut, only mine was the Y axis. A few days previously I had changed the Dir Active setting to reverse the Y axis but it had reverted to the original setting after the power cut. Seems like it didn't load the most recent .xml file? Why should this happen? Any other explanation?
Thanks
Richard
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Had you kept Mach running from the time you changed the Dir active setting to the time there was a power cut?
Hood
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Had you kept Mach running from the time you changed the Dir active setting to the time there was a power cut?
Hood
That's posible... can't actually remember. Is the xml file only updated when Mach is closed? If so, I'd say that was a weakness- much better if it updated whenever a config dialogue window is closed.
cheers
Richard
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That is correct.
Weakness? maybe but its just the way things are done at the moment. I use the Industry Controls version of Mach on one of my mills. When wanting to change any config settings you have to first choose to enable it from the Config menu then you can gain access to normal config settings. Once you have done what you want then you have to save and close the config options before you can do anything. This is the way it has to be to save config without shutting down Mach and is likely the way it will be handled in Mach4 as well.
Hood
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That is correct.
Weakness? maybe but its just the way things are done at the moment. I use the Industry Controls version of Mach on one of my mills. When wanting to change any config settings you have to first choose to enable it from the Config menu then you can gain access to normal config settings. Once you have done what you want then you have to save and close the config options before you can do anything. This is the way it has to be to save config without shutting down Mach and is likely the way it will be handled in Mach4 as well.
Hood
That sounds good, thanks for the help.
I changed the dir setting and restarted mach, all works fine. However I took a look at my settings and it seems to me they are a bit of a mess. This is what I found:
Motor Home/Soft Limits:
Reversed Home Neg
x tick cross
y cross tick
z tick cross
Motor Outputs
Dir Low Active
x cross
y tick (after recent change)
z cross
It looks to me like some of those settings cancel each other out (if that makes sense) but I can't figure out which. At the moment, Z increases as the head rises, X increases as table moves to left and Y increases as the table moves out away from the column. The orientation of the work matches that shown in Draftsight and Sheetcam, but I can't help thinking there's something wrong somewhere. Any thoughts?
Thanks
Richard
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As long as the axis are going in the right direction then the settings dont really matter. Dir active state and Reversed setting in Homing and limits do exactly the same.
Home Negative may or may not be correct, just depends on where you want to home and that is assuming you actually have home switches. Normal would be to home negative on X and Y and positive on Z but it doesnt have to be. For example on my mills I want to home with the table fully away from the column so that is actually homing positive. The reason I want that is so that loading material is easier as it is closer to me and saves me having to jog after homing just to load material. One mill has the table moving negative for homing the other right, again doesnt make a differendce it is just one is easier to load one way than the other. I have a Home Off value entered for these machines so that machine coords conform to normal so in other words when I hiome the machine the axis are fully positive but because I have a home off value equal to the axis travel the Machine coords show I am at that distance away from machine zero.
Hood
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Thanks Hood. Useful comments. I particularly like this bit:
"As long as the axis are going in the right direction then the settings dont really matter"
That's really what I wanted to hear!
Cheers
Richard
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No probs :)
Hood