Messages

1

General Mach Discussion / Re: How to recover from power interuption?

« on: September 16, 2010, 11:42:51 AM »

Thanks for that BR549

It may come to that. Starting to look at using a generator as a back-up for the back-up.

Dennis

2

General Mach Discussion / Re: How to recover from power interuption?

« on: September 16, 2010, 11:16:13 AM »

Hi Ian

As the UPS is at the moment it should run for about half an hour using the internal battery pack. That should be enough to park every thing. More battery is possible, but, I think it is necessary to maintain holding torque on the motors until power is restored. We have had no power for 26 hours on one occasion; most are for around 8 to 9 hours. The short interuptions; maybe when a baboon has tripped a breaker last only 5 to 10 minutes. For these short interuption I need the UPS to carry the load until power is restored. So, I would not start the park and shutdown routine until the interuption had been in effect for 15 minutes.

Dennis

3

General Mach Discussion / Re: How to recover from power interuption?

« on: September 15, 2010, 12:36:23 PM »

Evening all.

Been away for two days, so no followup by me. Sorry.

Ian. No. So far I am at the planning stage. This power outage has me worried so I am not spending money for the moment. How do you think using "Feedhold" will help?

The idea of accurate limited switches has my interest. Has anyone tried using "Linear variable differential transformer" LVDT techniques. These have been around from before my young days as an engineer and seem to have a lot going for them. This afternoon I made up an example and it can resolve better than anything that I have to measure with. It would be good to know if others have any experience with them.

How do I find the wiki referred to for OEM codes?

Thanks all.

Dennis

4

General Mach Discussion / Re: How to recover from power interuption?

« on: September 13, 2010, 12:30:55 AM »

Thank you Hood, Jorge

Jorge has understood the type of thing that I hope to do. I estimate that each run will be between 10 and 14 hours using 0.02mm stepovers.
Also, at my age and with my character, it's not just the destinations in life that are important; it's the route that the journey takes.

Hood. Point me please to the information that is around on this subject. There may be an obvious way to find it, but I am new to this subject of computers. (Got my first laptop as a retirement present)

One other point has occurred to me after testing the download trial with the (very old) driver cards that I have. The maximum pulse length from Mach3 is 5us for step and direction. My driver cards require between 5 and 30us. Now I can stretch them with a bit of electronics, but, for the sake of taking the hard road; can it be done in software?
Messing with software is free except for time, and that I have in stock.

I guess it's a work day for you guys!! Not me!

Dennis

5

General Mach Discussion / Re: How to recover from power interuption?

« on: September 12, 2010, 01:21:17 PM »

Thanks Jorge

How do you get the signal into Mach3 to create the feed hold command?

From reading some of the other posted messages on this site it seems that there are a lot more features in Mach3 than are in the downloadable book.

There has been mention of OEM inputs; is there information about these features anywhere on the net or is it only in the book that comes after you purchase the software?

On a question about "Open Doors Inhibit" Hood replied that the answer was "System Hotkeys from Config menu and set up the Chosen OEM as 1021" why 1021 and what would happen if 1022 is used instead. My feeling is that there is a lot more to this software than most folks know.

Thanks to everyone for all the comments so far..

Dennis

6

General Mach Discussion / Re: How to recover from power interuption?

« on: September 12, 2010, 04:05:59 AM »

The kind of work that I have in mind is based on a machine that I have with a 0.01 resolution on three axis and involves 3D carving by scanning across the image to give very fine detail.   The UPS can keep the steppers in place under low power for hours; so that's no problem. I will need the line number that the programme was at when the power failed, and that I can get by recording the monitor screen. Question:- If I fit an extra parallel port; is there a way to detect one of the inputs and do a macro/jump to a given line in the programme code/change the way Mach3 continues? (Continues - Not stop)

For the sake of interest; there have been 42 power faults sense I started the request for information. Some just for a few seconds, but long enough to wreck the kind of work I wish to do.

Dennis

7

General Mach Discussion / Re: How to recover from power interuption?

« on: September 11, 2010, 12:32:49 PM »

Thanks for the comments.

How is this problem solved in other places in the world that have unreliable power? Even if they don't use Mach3 they must have a workaround.
Next week I will start looking a the limit switch idea. To write a macro that checks an input from time to time sounds attractive, but, is there any information on how to do this kind of thing available on the net, or, is it something for programmers only?

I should like to hear from any member who live with the problem at their work.

Dennis

8

General Mach Discussion / Re: How to recover from power interuption?

« on: September 10, 2010, 12:58:13 PM »

Thanks for the ideas.

What type of home switch is available that can hold to 0.0005 or better?

How would Mach3 know that the power is off? Would I have to use one of the inputs that are in short supply? Maybe a second parallel port!
Is it possible to have the keyboard monitored by Mach3 for some combination of keys? I could fix a solenoid to operate on mains failure?

Dennis

9

General Mach Discussion / How to recover from power interuption?

« on: September 09, 2010, 11:24:09 PM »

I have moved to Africa for my old age and would like to do some CNC milling and MACH3 seem the answer.

Problem. -- In this part of the world we often get power outages.
To get over this I could use a UPS to keep things going for a very short time.
It seem to me that I would need an input to MACH3 that would lift the cutter to a safe height and send x & y to zero, (so that when power is restored I can start over without losing registration) then power everything down.
I could do it all, except, the "getting MACH3 to do what is needed when given an external input.
My intention would be to do work that may take many hours to run, so the machine will be un-attended.

Anyone know if this can be done?
Dennis

I think that I posted this in the wrong place at first; sorry!