Machsupport Forum
Mach Discussion => General Mach Discussion => Topic started by: Tarzan on March 04, 2018, 12:04:42 PM
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Hello guys,
I have been reading threads and watching you tube vids to no avail. So I am looking for help to my problem.I am a Machinst and not an electical/electronics guy so I am learning as I go.
I have a Bridgeport Boss 5 and the switches are all Normally open switches. I have them attached seperately to pins 11 for X axis, 12 for Y axis and 13 for Z axis. The ports and pins look correct as far as I can tell.
My axis's all move in the correct direction in jog and mdi. And the scaling looks to be correct. When I hit all reference home the Z heads for the home and ignores the switch and keeps going.
Same in all axis when I try to individually home them. I am using a Mach3 5 axis breakout board along with the ESS. I would try and post some pics if I were able, but I will have to figure that out first.
Any advice,critique. and help is greatly appreciated.
Thanks
Rick
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Tarzan_pics
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More pics
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Hi,
the pic of the Z axis shows three switches, I presume two are limit switches, ie at the very ends of travel and the other one is a home switch.
The pic of the input pin assignments shows Z++, Z-- and ZHome all connected to pin 13? That doesn't make sense.
May I suggest disconnect the limit switches and leave just the home switch connected. You will have one switch connected
to one pin.
Z++ port1 pin0
Z-- port1 pin0
ZHome port1 pin13
Now try to home the Z axis.
Craig
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Thank you for the help
I went ahead and did as you said. I still get no reading from the switches.
The only switch I have hooked up on Z is the one at top on the right. I want to use it as the home and the limits.
Now I have set 0 entered in all the X++X- - ........only the home switches are set to their respective pins
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Hi,
you need to experiment with 'active low' to ensure that Mach 'sees' the switch. You should see the
home LEDs illuminate on Machs Machine Diagnostics tab when you flick the switch.
A home switch is a home switch, not a limit switch. You can try to combine them but your heading for trouble.
My recommendation is one home switch per axis on one pin. All the limit switches (6 of them) can be connected
in series with NC contacts and that can be connected to one pin as a limit event input.
Craig
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I can use the home switch on Z.and the lower limit for z also.
The x & y only have one switch each.
It seems like maybe it would be better to get some normally closed
Switches and put them in series?
What are your thoughts
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Hi,
that pic you showed of the Z axis, all those three switches have both NO and NC built in. You will
have to change one wire on each switch if you wish to use them as NC.
I suggest using the X and Y switches as home switches and as home switches alone. If you feel the need
for limit switches for safeties sake the buy and fit another four switches.
Craig
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Hi,
given that you have an ESS then with a second BoB then you can have another whole 'ports worth' of IO.
Additionally the second and third ports of the ESS are setup with pins 2-9 as inputs, unlike the same pins
in port one, but that means that with the two extra ports you could have as many as 26 extra inputs!
With a second BoB then you could easily have one limit switch/ one pin and one home switch/ one pin.
With a three axis machine that requires 6 limits and three homes for a total of 9 pins, easy done with
two ports of the ESS and two BOB's to interface to those ports.
Craig
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Hi,
one advantage of doing that, namely one pin for each limit switch is that you could use inductive proximity
switches for the four new ones you require for your X and Y axes. There are plenty of cheap ones on Ebay.
They are easy to setup and work well.
The money you save on switches would have to be put towards another BOB, so you don't get away for free!
A fairly simple BOB is all that is required, doesn't need relays or spindle outputs for instance.
Craig
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Craig,
That makes sense to me. And with more inputs I could add an auto Oiler and a couple other options. This mill already has an auto oiler, but the electric motor isn’t working. So I have been pulling the handle every once in a while to oil it.
I will play with the low active again tomorrow and see if I can get Mach to see the switches. I definitely need to get some homing and limits on it. BTW, do I need to supply power to the switches? Or does the BOB supply power to the circuit?
Thank you
Rick
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Hi Rick,
that depends on your BoB. Most that I'm familiar with have a supply for the switches and other logic circuits.
Just be careful not to heavily load or short it to earth...you may let smoke out if you do.
Craig
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Ok, So I found the active low in the output page. I played with that a little and my motors got very labored while jogging.
I was just going through the input page and homing and limits and playing with stuff. At one point I got the X&Y home lights to light up. But now they aren’t coming on. I’m not sure which parameter changed it. So I will do a little more with it tomorrow, only maybe more methodical and keep track of each change. It’s hard to remember from page to page otherwise.lol
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Hi,
I played with that a little and my motors got very labored while jogging
But changing active lows etc for input signals should have no effect on the motors. That is a totally separate
issue.
Craig
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So I wanted to come back and end this thread with my solution. I hate when I read through a thread,especially a long thread, only to find that the OP evidently found the answer but never came back and posted the answer.
So I woke up in the middle of the night and started reading threads on my issue . I learned that I neeeded to add a 12v power supply to my BOB. I thought that since I already had a 5V supply to the card that it would use that to charge the switch circuits. And on my BoB the 12v is attached on the opposite end of the card than the connections for the switches so it wasn’t obvious to me.
Anyway, I obviously am learning as I go with this. As I stated before, I’m no electronics expert. I appreciate the suggestions and help you guys give. And I’m sure happy I got my home switches working, now I am working on the limit switches. I need to get the configuration for them figured out.
Thank you
Rick