Messages

1

General Mach Discussion / Home Z Reverses When Using G28 or G30

« on: April 28, 2017, 07:15:02 PM »

I have been using Mach3 with XP for several years.  It has worded flawlessly from day one.

I decided to update to Windows 7, as I read how well it worked with the Windows 7 32 bit operating system.

I have spent hours trying to get it all working correctly again.  I am hung up on one problem that no matter what I do there seems to be no solution.

My problem is getting it to home properly with G28 or G30.

If I use the Home All Key, or the individual Home Keys for X, Y, or Z, it homes perfectly.

But when it encounters G28 or G30 in the program code, the Z axis homes right down toward the table.

Before it would trigger all three axis to move toward home at the same time, just like the home all key does now.
Doing some testing, with the Z axis all the way up, I noticed that with G28 or G30 ONLY THE Z axis is homing, and of course in the wrong direction.

So what ever the problem is, there are two things that are happening differently than it used to do.

I have hundreds of programs for different items.  I sure hate to remove the G28 from each, and then manually home the Mill after every cut.

Hopefully someone has experienced this situation and can offer a solution.

Sure hope so!
George

2

General Mach Discussion / Linear Joystick and Mach3

« on: May 23, 2011, 05:07:19 PM »

This probably has been discussed before, but I want to share my latest  experience with the group.

I have been using Mach3 for several years.  I have always used the keyboard arrow keys to jog my CNC machine, changing the jog speed when necessary to mill a straight edge or just do a slow cut.  The cost of buying a commercial pendant has been prohibitive for me so I started looking around to see what I might be able to come up with to simply jog the X and Y axis with a variable speed.  After doing a lot of reading here and other places I decided that a simple linear joystick would be ll that I needed to do the job.

As linear joysticks are just not available anywhere anymore, I turned to ebay.  There I found quite a few advertised as linear, being back from the days of the 386-486 computer with the old style DB15 connector that was common years back for connecting a game controller to the computer.  I ordered a simple two axis control with 2 control switches.  Including shipping it was about $15.00!

Well today it arrived, and look's just like new, even in the original box with the operating manual.  I use a Dell GX280 for my CNC system and of course being that new, no longer comes with a DB15 joystick connector.  That function was taken over years ago by digital joysticks into USB ports.  In my pile of old computers I had one that had a Sound Blaster PCI128 card just waiting to be removed.  Back then, typically all sound cards came with a "Game Port" which was a DB15 connector.

I slipped it into the Dell, installed the drivers from an old CD, went to the configuration file and calibrated the joystick.

Next I downloaded the joystick plugin from the ArtSoft web site.  I installed it, started Mach3, turned on the plugin and immediately had a working joystick, controlling my X and Y axis movement.  It is great to be able to jog from so slow you cant even see it move to about one half of the full speed of the machine, all from the joystick.

Now I can stand and manually control my milling of small parts without needing the keyboard in hand.  I still need to use the keyboard to jog the Z axis to a new level at the end of a "Manual" pass, but that is currently a minor inconvenience.  Now, if I can just figure out how to program my two  joystick buttons to jog my Z axis up and down, I will have all I need in the palm of my hand.

George

3

Machscreen Screen Designer / Re: Setup To Change Manual Jog Speed

« on: May 07, 2011, 08:14:19 PM »

Hi Klaus:
I have installed 1.49 and it does seem to be working just fine. 

The 1.48 version locked up two different computers as well as not working properly.  Sure glad you got rid of that one and have replaced it with the new and improved version.

If 1.49 throws any errors I will get on here and let you know.

Thanks for the help and all the work you do on this very fine program,
George

4

Machscreen Screen Designer / Re: Setup To Change Manual Jog Speed

« on: May 07, 2011, 07:56:12 AM »

Hi Klaus:
Thanks for the reply.  This morning I was going to install an older version and see if I still had the problem.

I will uninstall 1.48 and go back to a previous version.

Thanks,
George Race

5

Machscreen Screen Designer / Setup To Change Manual Jog Speed

« on: May 06, 2011, 03:27:47 PM »

I want to be able to change the jog speed that the mill moves when pressing any of the axis position keys.  This will allow me to do manual control of the axis speed when doing manual milling with the keyboard arrow keys. (Just like being able to crank the axis manually)

I put a Slow Jog %DRO on the screen, it is linked to OEM 3 function
I put a Slow Jog Down button on the screen, it is linked to OEM 112
I put a Slow Jog Up button on the screen, it is linked to OEM 111.

I would like those functions to work just like they do on the "Pop Out" jog pendant screen.

When I select the %DRO window and put in a new value, it puts the value in the X Axis DRO.

When I select either the slow up or slow down button, it toggles the Start button.

I am really doing something wrong here and can't seem to figure it out.

Help will be greatly appreciated,
George

6

General Mach Discussion / Re: Z axis drift during X-axis motion...

« on: November 21, 2010, 08:30:09 PM »

I have been following your problem and there seems to be no real solution in sight, at least for the moment.

I have an off the wall idea i would like you to try.  Press together, the CTRL ALT & DEL keys.  This will bring up the windows task manager screen.  It will stay on top of everything else on your screen.  Now run your program.  Watch the CPU Usage number at the bottom of the window.  If at any time to goes to 100% your CPU is over extended and program steps in progress can be gained or lost in the process.
If you seen it go to 100%, then click on the Processes tab at the top and look down the list to see what process is causing the CPU to go to 100%.

Like I said, kind of an off the wall idea, but sometimes can be very revealing with running a complex program.

George

7

General Mach Discussion / Re: Mach 3 and limit switches being seperate of wired into one input.

« on: October 31, 2010, 08:55:02 AM »

Mike, thanks I never realized that you could do that.

Neat idea and it would save a couple of inputs for other uses as well.

George

8

One on one phone support. / Re: Need help with settings

« on: October 31, 2010, 08:21:54 AM »

Just a quick thought, as I recently did exactly the same thing.

I simply ran the Mach3 "Port Install" software routine again with my new machine and everything went right back to working properly.

How to do it is in our Mach3 install instruction information.

Hope this helps,

George

9

General Mach Discussion / Re: Mach 3 and limit switches being seperate of wired into one input.

« on: October 31, 2010, 08:12:34 AM »

I may be off base here, but wonder if there is quite a difference between wiring the three limit switches in series, to one port, versus individual limit switch lines to three ports.

It would seem to me that if the three limit switches were in series, when you home the mill, the first switch to hit its limit would stop all axis movement toward home.  This would result, for example, I think, if the Z axis limit opens first, the gantry stops with the X and Y no where near the home position.

If you wire the three switches to their own port, then the three axis will always go to the same home position, the place where the three switches go open as determined by the position of the limit switch stop block.

Just another thought about how to do it,

George

10

General Mach Discussion / Re: A few questions as a new Mach3 user

« on: October 25, 2010, 07:40:02 PM »

I have had very good luck using CamBam, a CAD/CAM program that acts as a drawing program and converts the results to GCode.
Reasonably priced, lifetime upgrade, direct forum to the program producer.  Works great with Mach3!
George