Machsupport Forum
Third party software and hardware support forums. => Newfangled Solutions Mach3 Wizards => Topic started by: dresda on December 03, 2011, 02:02:06 PM
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I'm still testing and when I'm running the wizards in program run screen and then I would like to check the parameters that I set in that wizard, I go to the last wizard and machine machine jumps about 1/4" in rapid and snapped my 1/2" end mill. I don't have a problem with that if that's the way it is( don't go into the wizard screen when running) but I am trying to evaluate the system to put it out in the real world. I tried many wizards including the standard ones included with Mach3 and they did the same.
So far I am very impressed.
Ray.
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Don't change any screens while the machine is moving, and especially don't load a wizard. When you load a Wizard, you effectively unload Mach3 and replace it with the wizard.
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I understand that now but when this goes out in the real world with 15 guys using it it not going to be very safe.
You said don't look at any screens when the machine moving? I can look at many different screen when running the program and that should be normal.
When I was running the wizard program it would be normal to go back into that wizard to double check the parameters that you have just set like, did I set the step down to .1"
I have made my living servicing CNC machine for the past 35years, if they can push the wrong button they will. PC controllers mach3 are new to me, and I know they are inexpensive but they have to safe.
There has been a lot of great help on this site and a lot of guys do it for free just for the love of it. I think it's a great system and have several customers in the aerospace industry interested and have asked me to put it through its paces.
As I said if there is a button to press it will be pressed. If a wizard is running maybe the wizard screen should be blocked from opening, I would be willing to pay for that.
Ray.
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You can create a custom screen with only the controls you need on it. Sounds like the only way to get close to the safety you're looking for. Due to the way Mach3 works, entirely in software, it's very sensitive to external influences. With most other controllers, the motion is handled by external hardware, so anything you do on the PC doesn't affect the motion. Using an external motion controller with Mach3 might be better, but I still don't think you can open a wizard while the machine is running.
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I use an external motion controller DSPMC, had my share of problems with that, maybe that causes the machine to jump..
You understand where i am coming from, it would be normal to check your settings while running like you would check your offset screen.
Ray.
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Mach3 is NOT like a commercial controller such as Fanuc or Haas or Mazak or Semens.
It has many limitations (many safety related) if comparing it to the commercial controllers. IF you are trying to replicate the Commercial world of controllers then MACH3@ $159.00 is NOT where you need to be.
Just a thought(;-) TP
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I think your wrong, i think there is a place for it. I not comparing it to the others, just a few common sense issues, we can all rapid the tool in tool into the table if we want to.
Ray.
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OH i have been wrong before but not this time(;-) Mach3 is a great low cost controller and servers the hobby and small job shop that is limited in functions and equipment. But you will find in time that it does have limitations in many ways compared to the big boys.
Been there done that one as well, (;-) TP
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So do you think that Camsoft is worth $5,000?
Ray.
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Mach4 will help this issue when it comes out. I'm not sure if Mach3 is capable of disabling this, not that I'm aware of at lease. If the problem hasn't been addressed in Mach4 you will have the option of creating your own application for the user interface, or paying someone to program it for you - based on information that Brian has leaked to us in the yahoo forum.
Come on Mach4!
Hopefully it will be as beautiful as it sounds, and any limitations that exist in the stock user interface will be able to be addressed with custom frontend software. For now, BR549 is absolutely correct in that there are some limitations/caveats that the user MUST be aware of to operate the machine safely and without error. The way I see it, $159 is not enough for what you get! As a business user I would pay considerably more, but that would make it more difficult for the hobbyist to get into the CNC world - and AFAIK that is what Mach3 was originally intended for.
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Mach3 at $159.00 is the deal of the century for hobbiest and simple comercial ventures as long as you understand the limitations.
IF I were to start a new comercial venture that required CNC machines it would be with a Comercial CNC machine using a known CNC controller such as Fanuc,Haas,Mazak,etc,etc. That way you have a Machine designed for such work. The machines HAVE to work up to 24/7 and be stone dependable and repeatable.
NOW that said if I had to, "Very Low Budget" I would use mach3 BUT I also would have to understand the quirks that come along with it. Some type simple CNC would never have much of a problem and MACH3 would work very well.
Other type of CNC you would suffer greatly in Time and aggravation.
MACH4 and building your on GUI ?? NOT EVEN AN OPTION. IF the controller is not ready OUT OF THE BOX what good is it to an OWNER / machinist. The idea is to MAKE PARTS not spend all your time working on the machine that makes parts.
Just my mileage, your milage may vary do to local conditions, (;-) TP
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I know what you are saying, so if you are a hobbyist does that mean you must not look at your last wizard screen when the machine is running because the axis will jump and brake the cutter.
I have an old milltronics with a 386dx and it doesn't do weird stuff like that. Could it be my vital systems motion board, i'm not too happy with that, had the time for the feed hold acc/dec changed in his software to 100ms was 850ms and when you were feeding at 40inch/min and hit the feed hold it continued on for about 3/4" before stopping, now that was dangerous.
Most industrial accidents are caused be stupidity and not the machine doing weird stuff, I have investigated many accidents and some fatal.
Ray.
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YEs you are correct you MUST NOT reopen the wizard while Mach3 is cutting.
DID your old miltronics even have Wizards???
Also when you are running outside controller cards such as SS or the DSMP you are depending on the PROGRAMMER that wrote the interface(plugin) that allows Mach3 to talk to teh outside controller. Who knows HOW the programmer did the important functions such as feedhold or such. That puts it in the responcibility of the programmer that writes the interface NOT mach3.
EVEN changing screens can be risky even thought I do do it at times. Depends on what screen you're changing to.
Feedhold is NOT like other commerial controllers as well . You press the button then WAIT for mach3 to come to a safe halt and that could be many seconds depending on the Gcode and the look ahead buffer settings. It has to find a safe point in the buffer to stop at so it can retain the positional values.
IF you press STOP while Mach is moving you have lost postional reference and will need to refhome or reset the part origin.
To add these functions could vary a great deal on outside controllers running with MAch3. It all depends on the interface and the controller's capabilty.
(;-) TP
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It's a pity my Milltronics is so old and I don't want to learn but it would blow most controllers away, Hurco is is the same. Milltronics is conversational and G code, it has graphics, you can can draw a circle then draw a line in close proximity to the tangent point and it will snap it on to the circle and then you can that on the fly and just keep going.
For $2000. they upgrade the control, just don't know which way I should go, Have nice Fagor 8035, Fanuc 0 controls sitting here on the floor, or Mach3, EMC2....My feed hold works great now, they make is slow down because of the steppers I guess, I'm on servos and pulse coders and can stop on a dime. Yes the stop function shouldn't even be next to the feed hold, should be removed and should reset like any other machine.
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Mach3 at $159.00 is the deal of the century for hobbiest and simple comercial ventures as long as you understand the limitations.
Agreed!
MACH4 and building your on GUI ?? NOT EVEN AN OPTION. IF the controller is not ready OUT OF THE BOX what good is it to an OWNER / machinist. The idea is to MAKE PARTS not spend all your time working on the machine that makes parts.
Just presenting an option - not for the faint of heart for sure. I thought he had mentioned paying someone to make changes, but now I can't find the reference - must of been confusing 2 different posts - it's really early after all!
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So can somebody try a small wizard pocket cycle and just click to the last wizard while running and see if it jumps, I want to know if its my motion board,
ray.
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Ray,
The problem with that is simply that all computers are not equal (not even close), so even if it happens to run perfectly for someone else, does not mean it will work for you.
That is one of the drawbacks in this case.
Dave
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Tell me this post is not dead...
Ray.
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Ray,
Not yet...........
I am just thinking that folks are not going to waste their time giving you information on what not to do and then you desire to debate it.
Simply put, when your running a program you should not be playing around. Period. Mach shares with Windows and you
don't want to create a a problem.
It is highly suggested that you test out Mach to any extent you desire.
As you have stated....
For $2000. they upgrade the control, just don't know which way I should go, Have nice Fagor 8035, Fanuc 0 controls sitting here
on the floor, or Mach3, EMC2
If Mach's functionality is not to your liking then by all means consider using another controlling program as the choice can only be yours.
RICH
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YEP Pretty much dead, (;-) TP
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So if you are running a machine with a wizard and you are not sure about the parameters that you have set like the step down etc, you MUST not go and look, which buy the way would be a natural thing for any operator to do, but you can look at your offset screen, Diagnostics etc. I was only asking if somebody could try it because I am using Vital DSPMC and have had quite a few weird things happen, I have an MPG that has a mind of it's own but works fine when just through Mach.
Ray.
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Ray,
The "natural thing" to do BEFORE
running any program is to review the gcode, dry run it, or simulate it with no movement via Mach or another program . You wouldn't change your tire on the car and then decide to check if the bolts are tight when your on the freeway!
Do as you wish, often my advice to folks is "not to play with your mouse" and i really mean the mouse when running Mach, let alone interupting
a running program. Do you understand what we are saying?
RICH
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Rich, I don't want to keep slogging on with this and I do appreciate all the work you guys put into this, but you must understand one thing, I have made my living for the past 35years plus servicing and rebuilding CNC machines so I a few things have rubbed off on me..Example: One of my good customers who machines parts for the Mars lunar rover using Ultra sonic 5 axis machining centers asked me if I would look into putting together a small mill for his tool room, and asked me about mach3.
After going through the motions, I told him Mach3 is a great software but there are a few weird things going on like if you set the parameters in the wizard and run it, for christ sake don't go back into the wizard to check those parameters because the machine will do a hop skip and jump, he looked at me as if I was from Mars..
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If you told him a Ford Focus was just as good as a Ferarri, would he look at you funny then. 'Cause it's pretty much the same thing.
I think someone already mentioned that a $10,000 or $20,000 control can't really be compared to mach3, at $159. Even though Mach3 might be able to do 95% of what the more expensive control can do. The difference is that Mach3 is entirely dependent on software, where the expensive ones use expensive hardware to keep everything running smoothly, regardless of what the operator does.
And I mentioned before, when you load a wizard, you are in effect closing Mach3. Everything you see on the screen is discarded, and a new screen (with different controls) is loaded. With some wizards this can take Mach3 several seconds to do, and it just can't keep running smoothly when asked to do another task.
I think the reason that noone is trying it for you, is we know that it will cause problems. We don't need to try it.
Honestly, for the 7 or 8 years I've been reading the Mach3 forums, you're the first person I've heard of who's wanted to open a wizard while the machine is running. You might want to consider removing the wixards, then your operators can't open them. But you'll need to use a CAM program to create your code.
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Rich, I don't want to keep slogging on with this and I do appreciate all the work you guys put into this, but you must understand one thing, I have made my living for the past 35years plus servicing and rebuilding CNC machines so I a few things have rubbed off on me..Example: One of my good customers who machines parts for the Mars lunar rover using Ultra sonic 5 axis machining centers asked me if I would look into putting together a small mill for his tool room, and asked me about mach3.
After going through the motions, I told him Mach3 is a great software but there are a few weird things going on like if you set the parameters in the wizard and run it, for christ sake don't go back into the wizard to check those parameters because the machine will do a hop skip and jump, he looked at me as if I was from Mars..
I guess I'm also missing something here as I don't understand something. If you've been doing these services for so long, and you have the type of customers that are doing amazing work such as Mars lunar rover parts, why are you even bothering with $159 software? Shouldn't this be way beneath folks like yourselves?
In other words, if I'm a professional musician, do you think I'm going to buy a $99 dollar Squier strat guitar at a music store, and then get annoyed because it won't stay in tune for very long?
Again, I have to be missing something here. ???
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I have made my living for the past 35years plus servicing and rebuilding CNC machines
Your expertise is far beyond mine my friend and surely your good at what you do.........but........
you know nothing about Mach Software and need to evaluate it properly. Feel free to post a complete comparison
in terms of functionality to cost along with pro's and con's as compared to all the controllers out there.
I for one would surely be interested.
Happy Holidays,
RICH
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Guys, get off my case here. I was asked to evaluate Mach3 and yes I don't know anything about Mach3 or bloody computers for that matter. I was told it's a great software and it's used in the industry. I put it on one of my machines and thought it was great, but the first problem was when you press feed hold it took it's sweet time to stop, well that was a major hazard, I convinced rufi from Vital systems to change the decel time from 750ms to 100ms and now it stops on a dime. You keep beating on me and all I was asking was is this the norm or is there a problem between Mach and Vital motion. I don't have a problem with this on my machine as long as I am the only one running it.
Ray
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Mach3 takes liberties with the Windows OS. Microsoft designed Windows to be an absolute control freak and it will not release that control unless you massage it in just the right way. As mentioned before, much more expensive controllers use independent hardware to achieve smooth motion and a feature rich environment in Windows. Mach3 is all software, baby! No expensive hardware at all. To be honest, as far as I know Mach3 is the ONLY exclusively software based motion controller operating on the Windows platform. Making it work at all was in itself a great feat.
If you told him a Ford Focus was just as good as a Ferarri, would he look at you funny then. 'Cause it's pretty much the same thing.
Actually, I see it more like a Ford Mustang vs an F1, but with the Mustang, at a fraction of the price, they also throw in a complete workshop to tune it up as you see fit. However, you still need to know or learn how to use the tools to tweak and tune the performance and make new parts to produce a car that is truly drool worthy. In Mach3, the same is true - you get a decent base model and if you're willing to learn (or pay someone) you can have one slick machine. That being said, don't expect it to outperform the F1 on the track, but you can still get way more functionality and enjoyment out of the Mustang.
Feedhold function in Mach3 stops at the next convenient and safe spot to guarantee that you can resume without problems/lost steps/sync issues. Perhaps it could be better with the developers spending more time on it, but I guess it is what it is. Likely this was the easiest way to make it work within Windows.
I don't think people were trying to beat on you, but instead trying to impress on you that Mach3 was designed for the hobbyist - it just so happens that it's good enough to be used in production roles like in my shop - and I wouldn't change to a commercial controller at this point. With Mach3, where there's a will there's a way. With commercial controllers you are locked into the functionality that the developers decided you need. To each his own.
Please don't hesitate to ask more questions about the limitations and any quirks you find - many people have had quirks that are not normal and can be fixed, but if the experts here are telling you it's normal, please resist the urge to compare Mach3 to a commercial controller, as Mach was not designed to be a commercial controller replacement.
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I couldn't have even come closer to saying it any better myself. Nicely done Sargon :)
Thanks,
Dave
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Well said Sargon and the sky is the limit with this control , not like Fanuc that costs an arm and a leg to change the ladder. Now All I need to do is to delete the button that says "last Wizard" and everybody will be happy, why have last wizard anyway? Try to think that somebody else is running the machine and not you, and what would they do....
Without the last wizard button the operator would not want to go into the wizard screen while the machine was running because he would not want to create a wizard while running a wizard right, but might want to to look at the last wizard because he knows that's the one he is using, and why not look at the parameters he had set for that wizard, just like looking at your tool length offset or work offset while that tool is being run. Sorry if I keep going on but if there is a button to push, it will be pushed.
Ray.
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Well, Ray, since you keep feeling the need to go on, I keep feeling the need to help you ;)
There are a couple of screen designers just for this situation, that I bet if you were willing to look at, with your obvious intelligence, you'd figure it out in an hour and have that button removed in no time at all. Just make sure you make a backup of the screenset before playing around.
This is the whole point of Mach. It's cutomizable to the user, and the way they like to use Mach 3. Don't like a feature? Just remove it from the screen. Want a feature from another page, but it's not on your preferred screen? Just add it, and away you go, it's that easy.
Hope that helps-
Dave
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Thanks Dave. For now I will leave it, not a problem for me using it, and you are right and that's what I like about it.
Ray.