Messages

1

General Mach Discussion / Re: Dir pulse length

« on: April 14, 2007, 02:54:03 PM »

Does that mean that the DIR pin can be either full on or off? My boards respond to either no signal or a continuous one for direction control so unless I can arrive at that state I will only get a movement in one direction as a pulse will only cause the motor to lick in a different direction.
John

2

General Mach Discussion / Dir pulse length

« on: April 14, 2007, 02:06:07 PM »

Can someone tell me how long the Dir pulse or signal is? Step is obviously no problem but when I was looking at Mach 3 I saw that the DIR pulse length can be changed but as I need it to be either on or off to suit my motor control boards a pulse will not work.
Help please.
John

3

General Mach Discussion / Re: suitability of notebook

« on: April 08, 2007, 06:40:11 PM »

Had a day off today after the previous problems so still have not advanced much,
This evening I decided to download some tutorials and in one I was listening to the setting up of pins etc and it said about port numbers and port 0 not existing and had to be changed to port 1. Firing up the laptop I went straight to the config files and sure enough port 0 was ticked. I have now changed the three motor sets to port 1 ready for a new start as soon as I sort out an alternative power supply. I had assumed that the port number had defaulted to match the parallel port of LPT1 but obviously I had thought wrongly so now I am hoping that it might possibly start to work. If I can just get 3 motors moving I can then tune them but at present they only twitch when switching on the computer and that is as far as I get.
Hoping for some results tomorrow.
John

4

General Mach Discussion / Re: suitability of notebook

« on: April 06, 2007, 08:38:05 PM »

Will do when it gets to daylight again,
One thirty five here at the moment so I think perhaps I'll go to bed. Been trying to convert a picture ended up at 738 MB, a bit on the big size I think. Try a more simple picture later.
John

5

General Mach Discussion / Re: suitability of notebook

« on: April 06, 2007, 08:05:43 PM »

Hi Brett,
Second attempt to send what I hope is the file you asked for. Had to add John to the front as I was informed the file had already been sent or was there. Cyber confusion strikes again as I do not remember trying to send it before.
John

6

General Mach Discussion / Re: suitability of notebook

« on: April 06, 2007, 06:32:05 PM »

No improvement today,
I reset the output pins but cannot get anything to move. Using a different program the motors move so I know that if there are step and direction signals it will work. There is obviously something that I am missing  setting  in the config menus but I have no idea as to what I am not doing correctly. Tried slow speeds low, high and inbetween acceleration but nothing seems to be coming from the computer, as I said it works using a different controller so my lack of motor movements must be because I have not done something.
John

7

General Mach Discussion / Re: suitability of notebook

« on: April 05, 2007, 07:37:45 PM »

No such luxuries as ball screws,
Pension dictates el cheapo studding of M10 and M12 but with belt drives set to result in 1 mm per 200 steps. Likewise pension says only full steps, crude by most standards but fine for me and 0.005 mm per step is as accurate as I need go. Maybe if the God of Lottery numbers should smile upon me then things could change but I am content with what I have but would like to make it work.
John

8

General Mach Discussion / Re: suitability of notebook

« on: April 05, 2007, 06:45:19 PM »

No breakout board as yet,
I have another posting about some schematics for those, I saw and copied somewhere but cannot find them again as I need a better copy than those I saved. As for the wiring it actually comes from a centronics type connector since I have plenty of old printer leads to play with so using what is to hand but the pins are correct relative to the DB25 connector. I think I may have found the answer though while searching for something similar. It was a series of postings a couple of weeks ago coincerning a similar problem with a Taig Mill. It started me thinking that maybe I had done something silly which on investigation it seems I have. I was using pins 4,6,8 for step and 5,7,9 for direction but on looking more carefully at my own pin out listing I have sort of got step and direction the wrong way round with directions being 4,6,8 and step should be 5,7,9. I think I got confused as I have direction before step on my chart. I have just reset the pin numbers ready for another try in the morning.
Although I may have sorted that out I was still having trouble setting up motor speeds and steps so a pointer or two in the direction in the manual would be very helpful. At the moment though all I want to do is get the thing moving in the right directions and fancy stuff such as making actually machine something can wait until I am familiar with the software and writing something in G code.
John

9

General Mach Discussion / Re: suitability of notebook

« on: April 05, 2007, 04:58:50 PM »

It has not been a good day,
Nice and warm with the sun shining so it seemed a good ide to start trying to get to grips with Mach 3. It did seem a good idea to sit there in tthe sun with a few beers to hand until I tried to use the mouse. Sideways movement but no up and down so I thought to myself has the Mach coding upset the laptop. In the end the trouble was traced to the bright sunlight shining throughh th plastic of the mouse and upsetting the optical sensors so I put it in a shady spot.
Following the instructions in the Mach 3 tutorial I set up for mm and moved on to the pins and changed them to suit my existing connections, set the motors to my screw pitch and steps and following through the instructions tried the G0 X10 Y10 Z10, nothing happened! Fiddled with the motor settings still no joy so uninstalled the latest version and tried Mach 2.
Even worse this time, terrible trace from the motor test and nothing moved at all. Uninstall and put on the lockdown version, a better trace but not as good as the latest so I set up the motors and pins again and tried the reset which did not want to play. Eventually I found out how to disable the external E-stop and entered similar things as before. OK the numbers moved but nothing ese and I got a green line running off the toolpath screen at an angle and stopped who knows where. Could not alter feeds either in fact could not really do anything other than enter some coding as the instructions said.
I know that the computer has enough output voltage to switch the isolators since it sort of works on a different piece of software so would think that the signals from the Mach program would be similar so now I am sort of stuck and at a loss as to what to try next. I have used default settings apart from the pin numbers initially and later tried playing with motor things but all to no avail. To cap it all the leisure battery I use for a power supply has expired and needs to be interred at the nearest recycling centre. I use a 13.5 volt 110 amp hour battery as a power source and recharge as needed, plenty of power for my small machine that only draws about 6 amps maximum and of course is the smoothest source of power that can easily be found.
Basically I am need of help.
John

10

General Mach Discussion / Re: suitability of notebook

« on: April 04, 2007, 04:57:20 PM »

Thanks for the reply Brett so now I'll leave you in peace.
But tomorrow is another day.
John