Messages

1

General Mach Discussion / Re: Bouncing Limit Switches??!!! please help me regain my sanity!

« on: August 28, 2012, 06:19:22 AM »

Thanks for looking.


I'll have a poke around the board and see if I can figure anything out. As I understand it the limits are normally pin 11 and 12? and they are normally pulled up to 5v? Could I hack the board a little to get the pins reading correctly?

Benjamin

2

General Mach Discussion / Re: Bouncing Limit Switches??!!! please help me regain my sanity!

« on: August 28, 2012, 04:37:30 AM »

Here is my XML file

3

General Mach Discussion / Re: Bouncing Limit Switches??!!! please help me regain my sanity!

« on: August 25, 2012, 09:01:13 AM »

Great, thanks Hood. I'll be back in front of the machine on tuesday morning. I'll send the XML first thing.

I'm sure it's something simple i'm missing!

Benjamin

4

General Mach Discussion / Re: Bouncing Limit Switches??!!! please help me regain my sanity!

« on: August 25, 2012, 08:29:03 AM »

Thanks for getting back to me Hood

I will change the connections to NC, good advice.

On the noise, the board is powered by USB, I did wonder if I should use a dedicated 5V PSU instead. The wires are not shielded, I can try and grab some shielded wire from maplins and test this.

The other weird thing is that the switches do not always trigger when you close them and if they do they sometime bring on the other axis (only have X & Y on this machine).

Benjamin

5

General Mach Discussion / Bouncing Limit Switches??!!! please help me regain my sanity!

« on: August 25, 2012, 08:07:39 AM »

Dear All

I have recently bought a ZP5A-INT Breakout board from Zapp and running Mach3Version3.043.062 on an XP desktop machine.

The motors work perfectly and very pleased however I added limit switches and having some problems. I set the inputs on the settings to pin11 and 12 as per the instructions, however they seem to bounce around switching on randomly. I checked the switches and they are fine, wired up NO so therefore set Mach3 up to register LOW active.

A funny thing happens when I touch the contacts with bare hands, the inputs seem to bounce on the diagnostics page.

Does anyone have any idea what I am doing wrong?

Am I missing something.

Any help would be much appreciated.

Benjamin

6

VB and the development of wizards / Completely automatic running of Mach3

« on: April 11, 2009, 12:01:56 PM »

Hello All

I am working on a project where a C++ program I am writing must start up mach3 and get it loaded and running completely automatically.

I have created a really basic macro which uses the "runfile" command and have placed it into the initialization string on the general configuration. The C++ program then starts Mach3 from the command line. This almost works however there is still a need to press the "Reset" button. Is there a way of running without the need of reset???

Any help would be much appreciated.


Benjamin

7

General Mach Discussion / Re: dual arm control

« on: February 22, 2009, 05:36:24 AM »

Thanks for your new replies.

I'm glad you think it's do-able. I think Using 2 computers may be a way forward, and will simplify the actual drawing part significantly. As for the preparation of the GCode, this is something I will have to spend a bit of time thinking about. I understand that Lazycam can create Gcode from files such as JPEG or DXF. Perhaps this could be something I could look at (as the source image will most probably be a JPEG). If this is possible I could split the image during processing and generate GCode for each part. This could be sent to 2 computers to do the drawing.

As for the Z axis control, Tweakie, It only needs to be pen up/pen down as with a plotter.

Cheers

Benjamin

8

General Mach Discussion / Re: dual arm control

« on: February 20, 2009, 12:11:46 PM »

Hopefully these image can help explain whats going on.





The designer is in the process of building a prototype of this. There are basically two identical and opposite 'arms' which can move in x and y directions along the plane of the surface. z is achieved by a little arm that rotates down to engage the drawing implement to the surface of the paper.

The idea is that the system will be given an image. The image will be simplified via processing and then drawn by the machine. This catch is that the job has to be shared between the two arms so that they are both working on the same image (and not colliding!). The processing part is sorted... in that I can produce a very simple light and dark region image of the face with smooth edges ect. The problem is the rest.

I was going to work out whether I could control 2 arms independently from mach3 first and then address the other problems from then.

Perhaps this helps? I know, it's rather ambitious!

9

General Mach Discussion / Re: dual arm control

« on: February 19, 2009, 03:15:05 PM »

Thanks for all your replies!

It's a shame... looks like it might be a lot more difficult than I imagined. I wonder if there is a way of switching between arms so that half of the time one arm is drawing and then the other?? Although one of the major points of the machine is that the arms operate simultaneously .

The problem with writing specific GCode for the second arm is that the image will be different each time the machine operates.... perhaps the gcode could be generated by a separate app and then imported and run for each arm??

10

General Mach Discussion / Re: dual arm control

« on: February 18, 2009, 06:17:24 AM »

Great!

I am using steppers via a parallel controller so i think that will all work out OK. Still in the building stage of the machine and starting to think how to actually control the thing. I should really download mach3 and play but I was just worried about trying to use 2 arms as I assumed it would be designed for just 1 controlled arm.

Im based in London so no chance of getting help from across the pond!

Thanks for your quick reply