Machsupport Forum
Mach Discussion => General Mach Discussion => Topic started by: jimthefish on July 29, 2015, 12:11:15 PM
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Ha anyone had this problem? Been using Mach for 5 years on a Denford Triac Mill with a few niggling problems but nothing major, however today I had a strange occurrence. I was doing a batch of 12 components and came to the last one and set the machine off on its 15 min cycle cutting the final shape in copper. I decided to tidy up the workshop and after 10 minutes noticed the sound of the cutter cutting had stopped but the spindle was still running. It turned out the CNC program had completely disappeared from the Mach stack screen (it was blank) but the rest of the Mach screens were OK. I re-loaded the program and started the cycle from the start and the cutter followed the original path and completed the component. I was cleaning round the machine and computer and wondered if I had accidentally erased the program. Is it possible to do this?
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HIYA Jim , that does not ring a bell. BUT anytime you start seeing things disapear or just stop out of the blue SUSPECT a bad memory modual. Mach3 loads EVERYTHING into main memory to run. AND It is not blessed with a complete error trapping routine that can deal with allerting you to the fact that it occured. You may see this type of thing.
Just a thought, (;-) TP
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You might have something there BR549, only had the computer running for a couple of weeks as the last one fail on the motherboard. Its an old Dell computer as like most Mach CNC'ers were struggling to find old computer with the correct printer output. What's the situation regarding Windows 10, not that I'm using it on the machine in the workshop but I have a Windows 7 system in the house where I do my programming in the warm then use a USB thumb drive to transfer it to the computer in the workshop. Can I load Windows 10 on my house computer and do programming with Mach3 and still transfer the program to my Windows XP machine connected to the mill?
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Win10 SHOULD run Mach3 just fine BUT it cannot run the lpt driver. SO it should be fine for what you need to do. Create/simulate/verify gcode and then transfer it to the machine.
Mach3 can run on Win7 32bit and 8.1 32bit. LPT cards are not a problem as you can get them in both PCI and PCIe. So mach3 is FAR from being obsolete or unuseable because of lack of hardware or OS (;-).
(;-) TP
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Cheers, trying to build up courage to go to smooth stepper but resisting as I'm not very good on electronics and understanding how to diagnose problems and faults. I'm sure I will move soon but had loads of problems getting my spindle to work when I first set it up Mach and envisage the same problem if I move to smooth stepper
Once again thanks BR549
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Dunno if this applies to your problem but it may be of help to someone down the road that reads this thread.
On my machine, (refitted ORAC) the majority of weird & strange things that either start on their own, stop on their own or disappear on their own occur because I accidentally left the mouse pointer on an onscreen button. Thereafter, machine vibration, flying chips or green elves cause an unwanted mouse click & weird stuff happens immediately. I thought mine was possessed by the devil after a few unwanted Cycle Starts & Spindle starts (and stops) occurred. I came very close to drawing blood a couple times.
I've now made it a habit to park the mouse pointer somewhere harmless after every use. Probably all of our machines should have control panels with hard buttons but that's not going to happen!
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Hi all,
I was interested in Jimthefish's comment about difficulty finding suitable motherboards to run Mach3 with PP. I would guess
he is correct if talking old boards but I know there are new boards out there with PP that run fine.
18 months or so ago I bought a single board computer based on a dual core Atom with 4G ram and a 64G SSHD and installed
Windows 7 Embedded Standard. Result has been perfect. It will run the pulse engine at 100k with less jitter than my XP machine
at 25k.
Within an hour on the net I could list a dozen or more boards with one built in PP and at least one expansion slot to run another
for as cheap as $75US less RAM and HD. Why anyone bothers with old potentially unreliable boards is a mystery to me when new
alternatives can be had so reasonably.
I had one crash which I blame on my XP machine albeit with my prompting and poorly configured limits and it cost more than
a new Mini ATX board. Now I wouldn't go back to XP if you paid me.
Craig
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Craig,
thanks very much for that info.
Could you specify the make and model board you are using. I've looked at those but I get worried that I buy an "unproven" one and despite it being a lot more powerful, it won't run Mach3 good. The main thing I want is at least one PCI slot so I can throw in a dual parallel port card. I don't actually need the built in parallel port.
I've had mixed luck with computers. A relatively powerful one for instance gave a crappy driver test. I've experienced two that just didn't work at all with the Mach parallel port driver. Just today I've been setting up an old, and much less powerful P4 computer with XP/Mach3, it doesn't even have an AGP slot for a graphics card, only 4 PCI slots. However I pushed the driver test up to 100K and still got decent results. I'm guessing different motherboards/chipsets have a big effect on how well they work with Mach, whether they are fast/powerful or not.
It would be good to have a list of tried and tested Atom boards so users don't take pot luck and hope the one they choose works OK with Mach. I think I'd be happy to get one of those if it definitely known to work.
Keith.
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Hi Keith,
the particular board I'm using is UMB-D255E1 made by UNIGEN in Taiwan. The reason I bought this particular unit was that there
was a local supplier (New Zealand) and was able to offer a runtime licence for Windows 7 Embedded Standard as well. By choosing
this supplier I ended up paying WAY above what I might have done otherwise, about $750US for the board, RAM, SSHD and the licence.
Having done more research since I realise my mistake, or if not mistake, the premium I paid for a one stop buy. The price aside the
platform has run flawlessly ever since and the pain of paying a bit much fades as more and more chips get made.
As a starting point try Mini-ITX.com.
They sell boards by a number of well known makers, the one which is almost identical to the one I'm using is
D2500HN 1.86GHz Fanless Dual Core Atom Mini-ITX Board (Intel ODM) at $85US
My board has one SATA port and the other being configured as mSATA in which goes the SSD, brill! I used the SATA port only when I
loaded the OS from an optical drive.
Any search on the net will find such units and it seems that about 20% of them offer a built in PP. I didn't bother with the socketed versions
for Celerons etc because as you point out CPU power has very little to do with how Mach3 on PP runs.
Craig
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Hi Keith,
on re-reading your post I realise you don't care about a built in PP. Your choices just got wider!!
I was always keen on the AMD G series both the APU types (which require a support chipset) and the Soc
series which do not. The boards equipped with these CPU's didn't have a built in PP and I rather lost interest but
may be just the ticket for you. I am of the opinion the AMD GPU capability is better than the Atom's.
Have a look at
Gigabyte E350N-WIN8 Dual Core Mini-ITX Board with Radeon HD 6310 and 4x SATA for $89US.
In fact it too has a built in PP, why didn't I see that first time!!!
A search on ebay for Atom mini-itx will produce enuf choices for any purpose also.
Craig
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Thanks very much Craig,
I wonder if your New Zealand dealer ships over to Australia.
Yep, I agree that once you are making money with your toys, the extra cost for stability and reliability is well worth it. Just one unhappy customer can cost you a lot more than $750. Having a brand new new reliable board means it's not as much of a worry buying a Microsoft license because you won't be expecting to be asking to transfer the license to another PC when it stuffs up. Should be good for a few years.
I've seen the Mini-ITX site but like I say, the first thing I wonder is "Which board does Mach work great on". I've been looking into Linuxcnc a little bit and they too seem very picky about motherboards and which chipsets work great with Lcnc.
Well now I now at least one board that works.
Cheers,
Keith.
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Hi Keith,
I imagine NZ supplier would be happy to supply, they are Jenlogix. I can't find on their site any mention of the Unigens product but
that is what they sold me probably as its cheaper, quite a bit cheaper, than their more usual Avantech products.
Advantech has a supplier in Aus as well, search Advantech Austrailia.
The Windows 7 Embedded Standard (WES7) runtime licence is no trivial matter. Officially if you wish to use an embedded MS
product then you have to sign an agreement with Microsoft. This makes you an OEM supplier. You get a runtime code which you
install on every unit you make and buy a little sticker for each unit they call 'certificate of authenticity'. You buy them either singly
or in blocks as you require.
In truth Jenlogix had no right to supply me with either the runtime code or the sticker, but they did. I did pay for it and it must have
been bought originally from MS, it is a holographic thingy. I have only the one machine running WES7 so I don't feel that I have
abused the technical oversight. One could of course with the one runtime code make as many systems as one desired which is
why MS are so protective of their Embedded products.
It is my belief that it is WES7 that contributes as much to the stability of the platform as the crispy new hardware.
Craig
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Thanks heaps for that info Craig.
After your first post where you mentioned the embedded version, I googled for it. I see there's even a Compact version which is a "real time" operating system. You might be right about the embedded version adding to stability.
With basic XP I remove / un-install / disable anything I possibly can so XP is as barebones as possible.
Seeya,
Keith.
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Hi Keith,
Microsoft has released a number of embedded OS's over the years, including various compact versions. We had an automotive diagnostic/ scope
at work which was XPCe. Except for a few artefacts you couldn't tell you were operating a Windows system.
It is certainly true that a stripped down OS has a better chance of deterministic real time performance Windows has to my knowledge never
achieved it. By deterministic I mean that the OS is garanteed to respond to an event, usually an interrupt, within a certain time. Windows as it stands
can't do it.
The Mach3 pulse engine is a timer that requires service every 40us (25 kHz). If your computer is running well it will respond with 2-3us. If however another
thread/process/application has a higher priority interrupt service in progress the Mach3 starves and your machine halts. Try a viewing axis change
on the toolpath screen when running a part program and chances are you will stall the machine. The graphics processing means that the pulse engine
can't get serviced ergo Mach3 stops. When the redraw is complete and the pulse engine gets service its too late, your axis can't accelerate instantly.
The pulse engine is assigned the highest priority a application can have but Windows reserves all the highest priority levels for itself, no way around it.
I consider it a miracle that Art Fenerty was able to achieve what we have and blame none that we can't have what we want.
There are a couple of genuine real time operating systems out there, one which I think is very clever is RTX.
It runs a realtime scheduler in one (or more) cores and runs Windows in another. Whatever happens in the Windows core doesn't affect the realtime
scheduler. The Microsoft Embedded Manager in Melbourne is very enthusiastic about it, and well she might, it was going to cost $16000 to get started!!!
An external motion controller like a smoothstepper sounds very much more attractive by comparison.
Craig
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Thanks Craig,
any knowledge is good to have.
Been having a little play with Linuxcnc too. Seems the opposite way around with that system. The display will halt and must wait for the code to run. I especially like that latency test where you abuse the computer to see what it's worst case jitter will be. Can't have your cake and eat it though, it's a pig to learn if you want to get into customising things.
Keith.
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Hi Keith,
CNC'ing has proven to be a long learning curve, first mechanical design and calcs to achieve your goals, Mach3 or
what have you as controller, motherboard/CPU/GPU and OS to run it sweetly, CAD/CAM to have decent code to run...
I built my machine initially to make PCB's but always intended that it should be able to mill steel. I made a lot of choices
along the way in order to do this, cast iron beds, steel table/column, ground ballscrews, preloaded linear rails, low backlash
planetaires with 5-phase steppers.
Have been making PCB's, aluminium and brass parts for a while now. The weekend past I tried my first steel (1045, 160HBn)
parts. It worked but NOT easy, two broken one blunted carbide tools. What I had thought rigid even overbuilt has proved to be
otherwise and my luvly German made high speed spindle looks very marginal when cutting steel. Suddenly things that I never
really had to bother with in aluminium have become important; surface speed, chipload, tool torque, tool deflection, tool wear
and the list goes on.
As I say CNC is just one long learning curve!!!
Craig
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Hi Craig,
if you're into making PCBs you might find my Youtube video a bit humerous. I'm using my 8' x 5' cnc plasma table to drill the holes in my etched PCB.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eb8oN5rHYxM
Keith.
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Can you expand on the display will halt?
Thanks Craig,
any knowledge is good to have.
Been having a little play with Linuxcnc too. Seems the opposite way around with that system. The display will halt and must wait for the code to run. I especially like that latency test where you abuse the computer to see what it's worst case jitter will be. Can't have your cake and eat it though, it's a pig to learn if you want to get into customising things.
Keith.
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Can you expand on the display will halt?
Well, from what I've read, you can abuse the hell out of the PC by trying to make it do a zillion other things but that will not crash the running gcode. Linuxcnc runs what it is supposed to run FIRST then see to the other stuff "when it has time".
So if the screen needed updating but Lcnc was busy with something more important, the screen may appear frozen until Lcnc can attend to it.
Keith
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Yes - I have heard of this. (never experienced it though - linuxcnc is rock solid). The trajectory planner/motion/hal/ladder in linuxcnc are running in realtime. It takes priority over everything else.
the story is one of the first adopters of linuxcnc (emc at the time) had the screen totally lock up. emc happily ran the rest of the gcode with no issue. He rebooted and everything was fine.
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Hi All,
Keith is right, there is at least one realtime Linux distro, the one I am thinking of is Ubuntu Realtime. As Keith says it sticks to the business at hand,
if you nominate your CNC software as business that's what it does. Despite its billing its not in fact a real 'realtime' OS.
The genuine contenders for realtime OS have to guarantee a response time and there is a very specific technical standard to which it must comply
and is required for any number of important systems; medical, automotive, aerospace.... If you search FreeRTOS you will find more info.
Yes as the name implies you can have a genuine realtime OS for free!!! Downside is at least from our point of view is that it doesn't apply
to PC type OS's. If you want a realtime scheduler for a microcontroller running the ABS system in a car, one that has documented garantees
you're in luck.
Craig