Messages

151

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Mach4 demo "time out"

« on: November 21, 2019, 05:22:48 PM »

If you select the "Simulation Device" under Config > Select Motion Device, then the demo mode will not time out.

This is the mode that the sample profiles such as Mach4Mill installs with normally.

There is no way to bypass the timeout using any other Motion Device. Only installing a license will do that.

If you got your license from Machsupport.com, or PMDX, or any other distributor that supports self managed licenses, then there is no reason to delay installing a license. You can move it or create another for yourself using the Machsupport.com web site.

Steve Stallings
www.PMDX.com

152

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Breakout board will not enable, Mach4, ESS and C11G Breakout board.

« on: October 19, 2019, 08:51:55 PM »

If you do not have a license, you are running in DEMO mode. This will function fully for about 5 minutes each time you launch it. Otherwise it runs just like a licensed system.

153

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: where to download the latest versions of Mach4?

« on: October 14, 2019, 12:54:13 PM »

Or if you want development versions, not yet made release versions......

ftp://ftp.machsupport.com/Mach4/DevlopmentVersions/

154

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Hook up Schematic help

« on: August 13, 2019, 02:25:29 PM »

Sadly, the so called Enable circuit on most stepper drivers is actually a disable input used to remove torque from a powered motor so that it can be turned by hand. Leaving ENA+ and ENA- not connected is common as they are not usually needed.

155

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: I want to move 1 inch but move 5 total beginner

« on: July 29, 2019, 11:51:20 AM »

You need to click on one of the Motor labels on the right and highlight the one you wish to edit.

156

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: X move starts before Z move finishs

« on: July 23, 2019, 08:40:28 AM »

Don't overlook the possibility of dynamically switching between G61 and G64 as needed so that drills can be exact and regular moves get smoothed out.

157

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: X move starts before Z move finishs

« on: July 20, 2019, 08:39:39 PM »

This can be caused if you are running in Constant Velocity mode using G64. This causes the control to blend moves, and that is bad for drill cycles.

Try inserting an Exact Stop mode command, G61 before the drill cycle.

158

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Mach4 on Win7x86 crashes when opening dialogues

« on: June 15, 2019, 10:19:13 AM »

In this context the threads are internal to Mach4. For example, Mach4 runs at least two instances of LUA.

159

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Mach4 on Win7x86 crashes when opening dialogues

« on: June 15, 2019, 07:56:10 AM »

Mach4 takes advantage of a lot of threads to implement its functions. The Pentium series of processors have only a single CPU core and may struggle with running a lot of threads. Make sure that you have Hyper-threading enabled in your BIOS settings.

160

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Cannot tune motor, Motor screen will not allow entering data

« on: April 10, 2019, 07:40:47 PM »

Sorry, but the PMDX-426 project was put on hold because we found USB to work well.

USB is not quite as resistant to noise as Ethernet, but latency and speed are not
issues with Mach4. There can be issues if you plug in a large USB storage device
and Windows goes away while it caches directories, but this problem affects any
system, including Ethernet ones, because it is related to Windows behavior not to
the communications between Mach4 and the motion device.

All of our SmartBOBs employ common mode noise filtering on the USB port, and the
PMDX-424 (and other products being considered) employ electrical isolation to
break potential ground loops between the machine controller and the host PC.
For table top machines, and many larger machines things work well without
ground loop problems, but for industrial machines we do recommend using a
controller with isolation.

Twisted pair Ethernet (10BaseT) uses transformers for electrical isolation and
this prevents ground loops.

We chose to continue with USB because we feel that it works well for us and
because USB configuration is dead simple. Ethernet and IP addressing is normally
simple except when it isn't, then there is hell to pay in doing tech support for it.