Machsupport Forum
Mach Discussion => General Mach Discussion => Topic started by: bill_burgess on December 26, 2007, 01:47:16 PM
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Hi All Been a while since i have been back here
its xmass what beter time to play with my toy and create myself more problems
any help or pointers to posts that may help apreaciated
ok i upgraded to day to ver R2.62 checked opration all seems good
ok i have my system set up with soft limits this works very good but i have to remeber to switch off befor doing a ref all
if i do not then it seems to ref the z axis ok but when it hits the limit switch on the y axis it trips the estop with the warning
limits . I have to switch of limits then ref then move all the axis away from the limit switches then switch on soft limits again.
this was also happing on the old version that i was using . is there a way that i can change the code behind the ref all button to do the above automaticly ie switch of soft limits ref all drives then move drives to a set position then switch soft limits on again .
or is somthing not right on my system .
I also find a problem when i call for NFS wizards to load this also caused my system to trip the estop i can only think that the reset is not sent to the cambell board that i am using and the watchdog times out and trips the system while these are loading
any one had this problem befor .
Now the good news i have set up my webcam and seem to have this working ok but cant find any instructions on using it
my intention was to have it set with an offset x+50 y-50 this i have done I can now use the camra to center on say a 6mm hole then type the offset value into the dro for x and y this then allowes me to put the cutter back into the hole at x=0 y=0
I was looking for a button that would let me do this automaticly or have i missed somthing here
anyway thanks for reading this and any help you can give
Bill
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You should NOT have to turn off softlimits to reference, you have something amiss. Can you post your xml to see if there is a seeting wrong. Could be noise on your limits though, so maybe try the debounce up to 2000 and see if that helps, if it does then lower it step by step until you hit the problem again.
Hood
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Hmmmmmmmmm, will have to check mine. I think I have to turn off soft limits to Ref as well.
Brett
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I am having much the same problem with mine - I set x home, and it homes correctly, but as it backs off the limit/home switch it triggers the e-stop - I have to reset the e-stop before setting z home.(which then does the same thing) I will try the debounce solution as suggested.
Brett - yes - I had Skype, (to talk with my son in Iraq) but then wiped it off after he came home. I will download it again and get in touch.
Back to this thread though - how did you go on downloading your web-cam - did windows automaticall install it, and then did it run first time with Mach 3 ??? Did you have to adjust any settings or drivers ???
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Hey Jim,
THe webcam, optical edge finder I got from member zarzul came with a cd that had the drivers and other software. Before ever pluging the camera in, I installed only the drivers. Once that was finished, I pluged it in, opened Mach, video window and it all worked great. I will play with it a little today. I don't remember having to adjust any settings or drivers.
Brett
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Hi My webcam worked first time i loaded it with its normal drivers into windows once that was working started mach 3 and it works fine only thing that does nor work is the button to start / set webcam this reports that it can not start webcam but it is allready working just about to go get my xml file and chak again what happens
bill
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Hi Guys
well i had a look again tonight at my system still could not find why if will not reff unless i take of the soft limits so in the end i added this code to both reff all buttons
If getOEMled(23) Then DoButton(29)
DoButton( 24 )
DoButton( 23 )
DoButton( 22 )
DoButton( 25 )
code "g0 x5y5z-2"
While Ismoving()
Wend
Dobutton(29)
this now seems to have solved the problem for now anyway
still having the estop problem when loading nF wizards though
sorry could not find where the ini file was
bill
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Bill just out of interest what do you have the softlimits set to?
Hood
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Bill - sorry to jump into the post -
Brett - yes, got that, I might try and get hold of Zarzul and get him to e-mail the drivers
Thanks.
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ok i found the mistake in my code got it working to night to ref the axis then found that when i wanted to move if 5 mm in on x and y it ended up in midel of table .....
then realised i wanted to call the move in machen coordinat system so changed the code by adding g53 and g54 as below need to look and see if i can just comand in abs mode
or check if i am using g54 or some other offset copy it and then put it back into that mode after i ref but for now will leave as g54
bill
If getOEMled(23) Then DoButton(29)
DoButton( 24 )
DoButton( 23 )
DoButton( 22 )
DoButton( 25 )
code "G53 g0 x5y5z-2"
code "g54"
While Ismoving()
Wend
Dobutton(29)
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Bill I think it would be better for you to get the soflimits working as they should, you should not have to add code to your Ref button to achieve it.
Hood
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Guys, listen to Hood on this one. He'll get you straight. He gave me a lesson on this a couple days ago. Can't mess with the Hoodster. ;D
Brett
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Surely the only way to get the referencing working is to set the soft limits outside the co-ordinates needed by the home switches. I use micro switches, and when these are hit, they travel quite a distance (relatively) before they stop. I can't remember by how far but it might be 0.0500. The axis then backs off until the switche closes and then the DRO goes to zero.
It follows therefore that my softlimits must be at least 0.0500 below zero, or the soft limit will trigger.
Coupled with that, of course is the fact that my z axis - the main lathe axis, can be de-coupled manually, moved to a short distance from the switch, the re-coupled and the axis told to home ( this saves time becasue the traverse time is so long). This shouldn't actually make much difference, because the relative DRO position should always be several inches above zero in a +_ve direction.
The problem is, of course that, in setting software limits, if you set them too high - they will trigger an E stop. If you set them too low, (on my system ) they will bend the metal actuator on the micro-switch.
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Hi all Ok Today remberd to take a note of my soft limit settings and take usb memory to copy files
X axis reversed No soft max 586 soft min 1 slow zone 15 home off 0000 home neg yes auto zero yes speed 20%
Y axis reversed Yes soft max 459 soft min 1 slow zone 15 home off 0000 home neg yes auto zero yes speed 20%
X axis reversed Yes soft max 0 soft min -35 slow zone 1 home off 0000 home neg NO auto zero yes speed 20z
ok also found Xml document whitch i have attached
hope this will shed some light on the problem
regards Bill
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Bill set your min for X and Y to 0.
You have it set to 1 so every time your axis moves below 1 (in machine coords) you hit the softlimit.
Remember that the zero that Mach sets, as its machine coordinate, is after the switch has closed, thus setting a 0 for your softlimit min should never activate the physical switch. You can test this out by doing a rapid move towards your min limit, if Mach cant slow quick enough you need to set up a bigger slow zone, how much depends on lots of factors, motor tuning being a major one.
Hood
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Jim
I am having trouble visualising exactly what you are meaning, so if the following doesnt bare a resemblance to what you mean please ignore.
If your home switch is hit and it takes a while before the axis stops and reverses that is neither here nor there for Mach as Mach does not set the Zero (machine Coordinate) until the axis has reversed and the switch has closed again. Therefore if you set the min for that axis as 0 it should never get as far as activating your limit switch because the zero position is when the switch closed. As I said to Bill above if you rapid to the limit and the soft limits dont kick in in time then you need to set your slow zone larger so that Mach can decellerate your axis and not overtravel the soft limit.
As for your Z axis, I dont think there is any way that you could possibly set up softlimits as your limits can be moved. Obviously you could set up softlimits for min and max but every time you reposition the Home switch (or trigger for it) you would have to set up new softlimits.
Just out of curiosity, do you have your X axis set up so that the zero position is spindle centre, this is the normal way to do it on a lathe, that way every time you command an X move it will cut that diameter, eg if you are using Dia mode and you tell the X Axis to be at X40 you will cut 40mm Dia. This may not be of much use to you depending on your setup, ie if you have tool turrets/posts with fixed tools then you set it this way, if you have a Quick change Toolpost with all your tools in holders then it would also be an advantage to work this way. However if you have a conventional toolpost and are changing tools in and out all the time then it is probably of no advantage for you to have your axis set to zero at spindle centre.
Hood
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Hi Hood
thanks for that reset to zero and now works i have had a play with this and find the following
when you call a ref the system ingnores the soft limit seting and will drive the axis back on to the limit switch this may take you through the soft limit value in my case 1 so may drive to somthing like -50 this is ok because the system in a ref call ingnors the soft limit seting once the axis is refranced and that routeen ends then soft limits become active again
as my system was set to auto zero the MC dro this now shows 0 my soft limit set for 1 the system would see this as a fault and trip the estop .
yes can see where this is going wrong now if you do not auto zero the dro then the system may trip even if limit is set to
0 as it would leave the -50 value
Ok it could be that i am expecting too much from the system i was expecting the soft limit settings to allow me to define a work area on the table that once refranced the tool would not move out of
I now see that to do this would need the reff call to set the system on the limit switch back it off unitil the switch closed again set the MC dro to zero and then move the axis to the min soft limit value befor finishing so the system would not trip
it would need to this on all axis .
Ok something to think about
thanks bill
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Bill,
The softlimits are there so that the axis will stop in a controlled manner rather than triggering a physical limit and thus needing to re-reference the axis. Your softlimits if set correctly will give you the max available travel of your axis and will prevent you from moving further and triggering a physical limit switch, so in effect gives you a safe working envelope of your full axis travel..
The numbers in your softlimits are in Machine Coordinates, I think you may be getting confused with the work coordinate usually showing in your DROs. What I mean is once referenced you could move positive by 100mm on the X and then zero the axis, it would now show up as 0. If you now moved back towards your limit by 99mm it would show as -99 in the DRO. However if you toggle the Machine Coords button you will now see that the DRO reads 1 and so is still above the 0 setting in your softlimits. If you tried to move to -101 Mach would stop you as you would be going outwith the softlimits.
I am not the best at explaining so I hope this makes things clearer.
Hood
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Hi Hood
yes i realise we are talking Machine Coordinates,
as i say having now realised that the system when finished reff on an axis that the soft limits become active again then it is obvious that it has to be a 0 as this is what we are setting the Machine Coordinates, to once referenced with the auto zero function
mind you a good lesson in editing code to make it do what you want .
now i just have to find out why the estop trips when i load wizards and when they save g code back to mach 3
i did think it was just the nfg wizards but now found that all do the same
think i need to look at the watchdog signal sent to the break out board see if that stops when saving the data
thanks for you help bill