Messages

131

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Mach4 soft limits reverse axes

« on: November 21, 2015, 12:06:00 AM »

You've been bitten by a known bug in the Mach4 soft limits code!  Look carefully at the soft limits config screen.  For the soft limit min/max settings, the first column in MAX, not min, and the second column is MIN, not max.  You entered your min values in the max column, and vice versa.  So Mach4 thinks that the max limit is less than the min limit, which is nonsensical   The Mach4 jogging motion planner misbehaves and drives the motors the wrong direction.  If you try to run GCode (either from a file or from the MDI input), the motion planner will give you an error saying you are outside the soft limits.

So swap the values in these two columns and you should be good to go.

Bob

132

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Spindle Calibration ESS

« on: November 14, 2015, 09:59:46 PM »

If you un-checked the axis enable, then I would *guess* that the ESS is ignoring that configuration and using something in its own plug-in configuration dialog(s) somewhere.  But that is the extent of my "ESS under Mach4" knowledge.

133

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Spindle Calibration ESS

« on: November 12, 2015, 03:27:20 PM »

I have found that my spindle will still turn on and change speed even when the motor I have attached to it is turned off.

Do you mean that in the Configure->Mach dialog on the "Motor" tab you un-check, say, "Motor3" to disable that motor.  I've found that Mach4 can ignore this setting and will still generate motion on that motor if it is still assigned to an axis.  For example, say Motor3 is disabled in the "Motor" tab, but in the "Axis Mapping" tab Motor3 is assigned to OB1 and OB1 is enabled.  This was still the case in build 2763.  I haven't tested this with newer releases.

If that is not what you mean, well then never mind.

134

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: No spindle rpm dro readout

« on: November 12, 2015, 03:11:16 PM »

I am pretty sure (but not positive) that this is a plug-in issue.  As far as I know the Mach4 core doesn't do anything with the index signal except record whether the index is high or low (1 or 0), and then tell all the plug-ins that the index input has changed state.  The device needs to calculate the actual spindle RPM and tell pass that along to the plug-in which in turn tells Mach4.  At higher RPMs, it becomes impractical if not downright impossible for the device to inform Mach4 of every transition on the index input.

135

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Unlocking Config

« on: October 29, 2015, 12:13:17 AM »

See also my reply to our post on our forums here:
http://www.pmdx.com/PMDX-Forums/index.php?topic=183.0

Bob

136

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Mach4 Jog Increments

« on: September 09, 2015, 10:36:18 PM »

How much have you experimented with this?  Here is what I see, tested on builds 2580 and 2660 using the wxMach screen set.  You didn't mention which Mach4 build or which screen set you were using (which is useful information when reporting anomalous behavior).

(1) With default jog increment settings, I can cycle through 1.000 through 0.0001 step sizes as expected.

(2) Go to Configure->Mach... and change the "Jog Increments" table as follows:
     2  0.2  0.02 0.002 0.0002 3 0.3 0.03 0.003 0.0003
then click on "OK" (or for the Mach3 paranoid, "Apply"and then "OK").

(3) Go back to the jog tab and click on the "Jog Increment" button.  I see it cycle through 1 0.1 0.001 0.0001 once or twice, then 2 0.2 0.002 0.0002 3 0.3 0.03 0.003 0.0003 then back to two passes through "1 0.1 0.001 0.0001 0.0001" then the "2" cycle then the "3" cycle, then the "1" cycle twice, etc. repeating forever.

(4) Exit Mach and re-start.  The jog increment that is shown as the starting jog increment is NOT the one that we ended with before we exited Mach4, and is not even a value from the same location in the 10 element "jog increment" table.  I *think* (but don't remember exactly) that is was one of the "1 0.1 0.01 0.001 0.0001" values, but I'm not sure.  Clicking on the "Jog Increment" button it changes to one of the new table entries (i.e. a "2" value or "3" value), and then continues to cycle through the "2" and "3" values in order.

So, it is not entirely broken.  Just not exactly behaving as expected.  The answer seems to be "set the new jog increment table then restart Mach4".  I cannot explain why in step (3) above Mach4 seemed to have 2 complete 10-entry jog increment tables - the old one *and* the new one.

137

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Stop Button Problem... Bug or my ignorance?

« on: August 25, 2015, 11:34:51 PM »

I'll jump in here with the big caveat that I am guessing on part of this (I am *not* a machinist, I'm just an engineer who designs stuff for them :-)

As you've seen, the "Cycle Stop" halts execution of the current GCode file of MDI sequence, and halts motion (X/Y/Z/A/B/C).  I have never seen it alter spindle operation.  The script engine (apparently) does not track the state of the spindle, though obviously the Mach4 core *does* know about it.

I don't know if you can have BOTH a "Left Up Action" and "Left Up Script" assigned to a button, but you could certainly delete the "Left Up Action" and add something link this as the "Left Up Script" (**UN-TESTED**)

local mInst = mc.mcGetInstance();
mc.mcCntlCycleStop(mInst);
mc.msSpindleSetDirection(mInst,0);

Setting the direction to zero stops the spindle.  BUT NOTE: The GCode processor (or MDI processor) won't know to turn the spindle back on if you the click on "Cycle Start".  And there may be important reasons (that machinists know but I don't) as to why one would want to leave the spindle running on "Cycle Stop".

Bob

138

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Z axis not homing mach 4

« on: August 08, 2015, 01:12:17 AM »

Two thoughts:

(1) What version of Mach4 are you running?  The default screen set in some of the earlier versions had the "Ref All Home" button programmed to only home the X & Y axis.  Newer versions fixed this - It looks like version 2336 and newer have fixed this (I don't have any older versions installed to check so I don't know exactly which version fixed this, I checked 2336, 2471, 2492 and 2580).

(2) How do you have homing configured for the Z axis?  Go to the "Configure" menu and select "Mach".  In the configuration dialog, click on the 'Homing/Soft Limits' tab.  The "Home Order" must be non-zero in order for Mach4 to attempt to home that axis (i.e. "1" is the first axis to be homed, "2" is the 2nd, etc.).  Also, the "Home In Place" column must have a red "X" in it (home in place means don't move the motor, just declare its current position as "home").

Bob

139

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Single Switch, Homing + Limits

« on: August 02, 2015, 01:35:38 AM »

Homing is handled almost entirely in the plug-in.  All Mach4 does is tell the plug-in when to start homing each axis.  It then waits for the plug-in to tell Mach4 that homing is done.  It is up to the plug-in to ignore limit switches when necessary (as it is in this case).  So *if* the homing sequence is aborting when it hits the home/limit switch, that is an issue with the ESS plug-in.

As far as being able to jog off of limit switches, the current Mach4 build (2580) appears to have a properly functioning "Limits Override" button in the default screen set (wxMach.set).  In some previous Mach4 builds (I don't remember which ones off hand but I think it was many builds ago), the "Limits Override" button did nothing.  Jogging off of limits switches is partly handled by Mach4 and partly handled by the plug-in, in that the plug-in needs to be aware of limits override being active and ignoring the limit switch function (our plug-in disabled Mach4 on limit switch trigger except when override is active).  If you see a message in the Mach4 error/status line saying something like "can't job towards X--", then Mach4 doesn't think override is active.  If the machine just won't move, or something else happens, then it may be the ESS plug-in.

Bob
PMDX

140

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: 2nd window

« on: July 13, 2015, 01:04:53 PM »

Or VNC or an of its many variants (open source):
http://realvnc.com (successor to the original, but now a paid product though you can get to an open source version from their download page)
http://tightvnc.com (Tight VNC - one of the forks from the original open source VNC that uses higher compression to save bandwidth)
http://uvnc.com (Ultra VNC - yet another fork of the original open source, can encrypt the datastream for anyone interested in secutiry over open networks).

Plus several other variants.  Search engines are your friend.

Bob