Messages

1

General Mach Discussion / Re: GRex Spindle Step/Dir setup

« on: June 10, 2008, 03:06:18 AM »

Art,

Tuning the spindle indeed does nothing, it says it flashes to the G100 and resets but nothing changes.

On the bright side however, while tinkering today i set the maximum frequency higher of the C-axis to 128kHz and it can now go to whatever speed i want, what that speed actually is i'm not sure (and don't really care) however i am still interested if there is a way to tune the spindle motor.

Thanks

Lost Tourist

2

General Mach Discussion / Re: GRex Spindle Step/Dir setup

« on: June 09, 2008, 09:11:32 PM »

Remember that i have C disabled (and all the others enabled as previously instructed) so i can't tune C.

The speed is fine, it's just the accel is too high so it trips the G320.

By the way, where do i set the temporary address as permanent as the constant searching restarting is driving my insane.

Lost Tourist

3

General Mach Discussion / Re: GRex Spindle Step/Dir setup

« on: June 09, 2008, 08:08:58 PM »

Just wondering if you guys have had any ideas on why i can't tune the spindle. I can step the speed up in steps of 100 to any speed but i can't start go to a high speed in a single command instead i need to g-code it to step up to the running speed.

Thanks for you help.

Lost Tourist

4

General Mach Discussion / Re: GRex Spindle Step/Dir setup

« on: May 22, 2008, 04:06:54 AM »

Thanks guys for your help,

I understood everything but "Set the port and pin of the C axis for the spindle output" I'm not sure how this works with the G100 which only uses the step and dir ports rather than pins.

So i did everything else you suggested which has made a lot of progress. I have set X,Y,Z,A,B,S axes and now the spindle responds to M03 commands and stops when the onscreen controls are used. However one problem still remains which is i cannot tune the spindle as any changes made on the motor tuning screen for the spindle are not saved or flashed successfully. (this is kind of important as the accel is set too high at the moment). All the other axes (X and Z) can be tuned fine.
Also the onscreen display can't see the encoder (which i really couldn't care less about) but the spindle autocal can't see the encoder either which i can probably live without as well if i can tune the motor)

Any ideas on this?

Lost Tourist

5

General Mach Discussion / Re: GRex Spindle Step/Dir setup

« on: May 20, 2008, 01:32:53 AM »

Thanks for your thoughts so far. It's good to know I wasn't just overlooking something obvious.

I'm kind of hoping the solution is more number 2 than any of the others. I assume no one has tried this before?

Lost Tourist

6

General Mach Discussion / GRex Spindle Step/Dir setup

« on: May 14, 2008, 03:32:46 AM »

Hello everyone,

I am working my way through a CNC lathe upgrade (the controls were nearly pre-DOS) and i am using the GRex and Mach3 to run things and i have most of it worked out however i can't work out how to set up the spindle in Mach. I have the X and Z axis working fine but i can't work out how to move the spindle.

The spindle is setup to run through a G320 the same as the other axes (The G320 happily holds it's position as expected with no spindle signal sent), i can't find a setting to tell the Grex which output channel (A,B or C) the spindle is on. In the spindle setup tab i have the step/dir enabled in the motor control group, In the motor outputs tab i have tried with just the spindle enabled, with just the axis the spindle is wired on enabled (A initally but i even rewired it to C after thinking i remembered reading this was important somewhere) and with both of these on.


Can anyone tell me what i'm doing wrong?

Thanks

Lost Tourist