Messages

1

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Mach4 Printer Port Discussions

« on: March 02, 2018, 10:15:02 AM »

Hi Art

I just had a change to test and this version works. The response to the probe strike is now much better.

Thank you very much for taking the time to compile and post this version.

Alastair

2

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Mach4 Printer Port Discussions

« on: February 05, 2018, 02:47:32 PM »

Hi Art

Sorry for the delay replying, life got busy for a while. Thank you for posting the version to try, I was only hoping for confirmation as I know you are no longer actively developing Darwin.

Unfortunately the version you posted does not load. There are two dialogs when Mach4 is loading.

1) Message dialog that is blank.
2) Error dialog - Failed to load shared library 'mcDarwin.m4pw' (error 0; the operation completed successfully.)
 
Now that I know it is hard coded I will try to find a way to live with it for the time being.

Thanks again for taking the time.

Regards
Alastair

3

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Mach4 Printer Port Discussions

« on: January 13, 2018, 06:31:32 AM »

I previously posted the below as a separate post but want to add it here as I suspect that the extra deceleration when probing may be caused by Darwin. Does anyone know if this is the case?

I am setting up Mach4 for probing and have found that the axis takes a longer time to decelerate to a stop after a probe strike than it does normally (as setup in motor configuration), this is very obvious as you can hear the difference.

I do some milling of circuit boards and want to probe the board with the actual cutter for height mapping. I have done this in Mach3 and it works well but due to the extra deceleration in Mach4 the feedrate needs to be a lot lower to prevent the cutter pushing into the board.

I am using the latest version of Mach4 and the Darwin printer port plugin and have been looking in both Mach4 and Darwin but cannot find any settings that affect this. Does anyone know if there is a separate setting anywhere for the deceleration when probing?

Alastair

4

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Axis Deceleration When Probing

« on: December 20, 2017, 06:34:42 AM »

Hi Craig

I also suspected it may be the Darwinn plugin as from what i have read the plugin is responsible for controlling probing. Thanks for confirming it is ok on your system with the ESS.

Alastair
 

5

Mach4 General Discussion / Axis Deceleration When Probing

« on: December 19, 2017, 03:47:56 PM »

I am setting up Mach4 for probing and have found that the axis takes a longer time to decelerate to a stop after a probe strike than it does normally (as setup in motor configuration), this is very obvious as you can hear the difference.

I do some milling of circuit boards and want to probe the board with the actual cutter for height mapping. I have done this in Mach3 and it works well but due to the extra deceleration in Mach4 the feedrate needs to be a lot lower to prevent the cutter pushing into the board.

I am using the latest version of Mach4 and the Darwin printer port plugin and have been looking in both Mach4 and Darwin but cannot find any settings that affect this. Does anyone know if there is a separate setting anywhere for the deceleration when probing?

Alastair

6

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Lua Editor Crashing

« on: February 09, 2017, 05:36:51 PM »

Thanks DazTheGas

I am going to give up on it for now. I have the machine almost set up and working, just a few more input and output signals to map for the pendant.

By the way, thanks for taking the time to post the videos. They are very helpful.

Alastair

7

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Lua Editor Crashing

« on: February 09, 2017, 03:32:52 PM »

I agree finding the cause of the problem would be better. I spent 4+ hours last night trying eveything could think of, including temproeraly removing firewall / anti-virus, reinstalling Mach4, creating fresh profiles, disabling plugins(removed from the plugins folder completly to make sure). At this point i have to admit defeat!

I will remove wx.wxExit once I have finsihed working on the scirpt just in case.

What is the normal message in the output window when a script ends. If I let it run through just before the editor crashes the output window displays:-
Killed debuggee session (number)
debug session finsihed

If I stop at a breakpoint and end the session with Shift F5 the the message is:-
Debuggie client stopped
debug session finished.

With wx.wxExit the message is just
Debug session finished.

Alastair

8

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Lua Editor Crashing

« on: February 08, 2017, 06:03:52 PM »

Quick update

Adding wx.wxExit to the end of the script prevents the editor from crashing at the end of a debug, for me at least. The wxWidgits manual states that this call should only be used in an emergency. So far I have not seen any issues apart from Mach4 closing if it is called outside of a debug session. Adding it as below will ensure it only gets called when the script is running in the editor.

Code: [Select]

if(mc.mcInEditor() == 1) then
    wx.wxExit()
end

Alastair

9

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Lua Editor Crashing

« on: February 07, 2017, 05:17:28 PM »

Thanks DazTheGaz.

I have tried disabling firewall, antivirus, windows defender, etc but it does not help. Now that I have confirmation that it can work ok I will have to dig a bit deeper to see if I can track down a cause.

For anyone else having this issue a possible workaround is to put a breakpoint on the last line executed and end the debugging session using Shift F5 rather than let it end on its own. If I do this it doesn't crash the editor although it is not possible to do this in every case. Perhaps someone knows what happens differently when exiting debug with Shift F5 as opposed to letting it end on its own. Might help narrow it down.

Alastair

10

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Lua Editor Crashing

« on: February 07, 2017, 03:29:43 PM »

Hi Craig

Thanks for the reply. I am glad it is not just me although I would prefer if it was neither of us!!

I wouldn't mind so much if it was a fault in the script that caused the crash, I have had plenty of those as well. Although it does bother me that some crashes take down Mach4, leave a Mach4GUI process running that you cannot kill from the task manager and prevent the computer from shutting down properly requiring the power to be forcefully removed. But that is probably another topic!

Getting back to this issue, a simple script like the one posted doesn't do anything so should not crash the editor. As this happens every time on two different PC's it would suggest that I am doing something with the install or configuration that is causing the problem or there is an issue with the Lua, Mach4 or the implementation of Lua in Mach4. For reference the install on the Windows 10 PC has all the default settings and has not been altered in any way.

I would appreciate if anyone could spare a few minutes to try this simple case and let me know what happens.
Even a one liner like the following crashes the editor for me on both PC's when trying to debug by hitting F5.

local x = 1

Alastair