Messages

1

General Mach Discussion / Re: not backing off home switch

« on: January 21, 2012, 03:08:43 PM »

ftomazz: I have now replaced all four of the 74H chips on the C10 board and there is no difference in the way the machine homes.

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General Mach Discussion / Re: not backing off home switch

« on: January 15, 2012, 06:08:13 PM »

Yes, after it homes the switch remains triggered in Mach.

Now I have enabled the jog limits in “Ports & Pins.” When I home, sometimes the X and Y back off the switches, and sometimes not. Sometimes they will back off 2 or 3 seconds after hitting the switch. If I go back to Ports & Pins and disable the jog limits, the router no longer backs off the X & Y switches at all. Is this also an indication of a bad chip on the board?

3

General Mach Discussion / Re: not backing off home switch

« on: January 15, 2012, 02:21:55 PM »

ftomazz: so did you buy another board?

4

General Mach Discussion / Re: not backing off home switch

« on: January 15, 2012, 02:01:39 PM »

ftomazz: yes to all that.

Hood: I found 'verify'...thanks. I've never known where to set up the limits. I have the home switches configured in Ports & Pins/Input Signals/X Home etc. I can't find anything there about limits. Is it the X++ and X--?

5

General Mach Discussion / Re: not backing off home switch

« on: January 15, 2012, 12:13:28 PM »

I’m going to show my ignorance here. There are no limit switches on this machine. What I’ve done is put one prox on each axis and then a steel ‘trigger’ that the prox senses at the home position. I also have another trigger at the other end of the axis and I intended to use both trigger positions as limit switches. But I don’t know how to set it up in Mach. If I travel too far on any axis it hits the end with a big crunch. Of course, I’d like to know how to set it up to avoid that. I don’t like using soft limits…have had problems with them.

Hood: I don’t know what you mean by ‘do a verify.’ Also, my E-stop never gets triggered unless I press the big red stop switch.

6

General Mach Discussion / Re: not backing off home switch

« on: January 15, 2012, 11:35:55 AM »

No, everything is working perfectly fine. The only issue is that it isn’t backing off the switches. I’m in the shop now and the LEDs in Mach ARE coming on when the switches are activated. I put an indicator on the X axis and slowed homing down to 2% so I could watch it. It stops dead at home every time. No back off at all.

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General Mach Discussion / Re: not backing off home switch

« on: January 15, 2012, 10:45:43 AM »

To the best of my memory, they do turn green. I'll double check when I go back out to the shop, but I do remember checking for that when I set it up. Thanks for the quick reply. Your suggestion makes sense. I guess I could put an indicator on it and watch the needle as it homes.

8

General Mach Discussion / not backing off home switch

« on: January 15, 2012, 10:39:56 AM »

I recently replaced the mechanical home switches on my X and Y axis with NC proximity sensors. I have them connected independently (not in series) to a C-10 breakout board. I left the original mechanical switch on the Z axis. The proximity switches work well except that the machine does NOT back off the switches after homing. The Z axis still backs off the switch as it did before. Can someone tell if this is ok, or did I do something wrong. I will provide more information as needed.
Thanks,
Charlie

9

General Mach Discussion / Re: MILLING TEXT ONTO A CYLINDER

« on: January 13, 2012, 09:51:44 AM »

Aspire will do it if you want to spend some money. There is also a little program called cnc wrapper that will simply wrap your g-code around the cylinder. A free trial is available at  http://www.cncwrapper.com/