Messages

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General Mach Discussion / Re: Need more IO with Mach? How about 91 with Modbus.

« on: February 14, 2007, 02:58:16 PM »

Thanks for the feedback fer_maryl, we will definitely keep working on the ramping ability. Actually, we did have smooth ramping here in the office, but lost the ability to track the exact number of steps at the same time.

One additional point...the problems seemed specifically with Gecko stepper drivers, possibly due to the common-anode optoisolator instead of common-cathode as our Xylotex drivers use. We were able to get no lost steps under a light load (desktop CNC axis, no cutting) even without ramping up to about 4,000 Hz. So it may be possible that even if we implement ramping, the Gecko drivers will still lose steps without some kind of current buffer.

One other thing that we didn't try, and I'd be curious to hear the results...the mid-band compensation disable jumper on the option block inside the G201 driver.

Anyway, if you want to get Modbus working with the Cubloc, it's pretty simple and I can help you set that up over on the Cubloc forums.

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General Mach Discussion / Re: 'Mill dust' and breaking bits... Advice please...

« on: February 03, 2007, 04:22:59 AM »

Also, your "Mill Dust" is called swarf. 

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General Mach Discussion / Re: 'Mill dust' and breaking bits... Advice please...

« on: February 03, 2007, 03:01:37 AM »

Tried some form of coolant/lubrication? Puddle a little water on there, or oil, next time. If that helps you might want to hook up a coolant pump or dripper.

4

General Mach Discussion / Re: Need more IO with Mach? How about 91 with Modbus.

« on: February 02, 2007, 09:09:16 PM »

Max and I have been working on getting our Cubloc modules to talk to Mach3 through Modbus. I dragged out my old homebuilt CNC trainer and got it back in working condition, thanks to the motors and drivers Max mentioned earlier. Played around with Mach3, it's very impressive featurewise. A little confusing to get started, but everything makes sense if you stare at it long enough.

I already had a Cubloc 280 proto board wired up to an SSR board, so I decided to experiment with one output, for the Dremel spindle. After watching the Modbus tutorial video I was able to use the spindle commands to control Coil 0 and automatically activate the spindle.

So far, Modbus with Cubloc appears to work great as a way to get more I/O to a machine. But I'm thinking beyond that; since Cubloc has BASIC and Ladder languages, some functions can be added beyond slave control by Modbus. Possibly do some math on an analog input and potentiometer for an MPG, maybe add some simple ladder logic to detect a fault condition and make sure everything shuts down safely, independent of Mach3 and Windows. Mainly I think the CUSB modules are ideal, they've got the relay outputs, power supply, and screw terminals ready to go. CUTOUCH would be an interesting touchscreen interface, though the Mach3 software has visuals pretty well covered. I guess you could set up a Cutouch in a remote location next to a CCTV monitor and be able to do some basic control of the machine.

Anyway, Modbus works, and we'll be trying out a few more ideas. Let us know if there's anything involving Cubloc and Mach3 you'd like to see us try out.