Hello Guest it is March 28, 2024, 06:42:35 AM

Show Posts

This section allows you to view all posts made by this member. Note that you can only see posts made in areas you currently have access to.


Messages - ITGuy

Pages: 1
1
Mach3 under Vista / Re: Minimum PC requirements vs real life (Newbie)
« on: July 19, 2016, 09:31:06 AM »
Thanks Christopher,

As it turns out, vibration from the Z axis stepper motor and gravity are the only reason the cutter was dropping; I could move the cutter up and down without too much difficulty even with the Gecko controller powered on. We finally took it apart and discovered that the shaft wasn't being engaged by the controller. The DB9 connector on the Z axis cable was wired wrong, with the black wire hanging and the green wire on pin 3 instead of 8. Either this created a problem for the G540 or Murphy's Law is just not finished with me yet; After re-wiring the DB9 connector and swapping some things around, I found that nothing connected to the Z-axis serial port would spin. About 30 seconds after that the controller shut down for good.

Right now I'm waiting for a replacement G540 and an extra serial cable to be safe. Hopefully things will start to make more sense in a few days. ... And I thought computer hardware was a pain!!

Bruce

2
Mach3 under Vista / Re: Minimum PC requirements vs real life (Newbie)
« on: July 05, 2016, 10:05:52 AM »
Wow, time flies; thanks for checking in!
This project got pushed down the list over the last number of months but the PC is in (HP Z230, i7, 8GB RAM) and I managed to cobble together a box for my Ethernet Smoothstepper with a decent power supply along the way.

We started again a few weeks ago and ran into all sorts of problems and bizarre behaviour; we'd get the router to move for a couple of minutes, but as soon as we encountered an error, we were dead in the water until I reinstalled Mach 3 and the ESS plugin from scratch.

Fast forward to yesterday, after a lot of testing, I determined that the Zenbot table doesn't like the Mach 3 defaults and the Zenbot provided XML doesn't play nicely with the ESS plugin, so I manually entered the parameters from Zenbot's ports and pins config and home/limits config, and set A as the slave for Y, suddenly I have almost a functional CNC machine! X and Y behave beautifully, no problem finding home or running g-code, but the Z axis if still giving me grief. When RefAllHome with Machine coord selected, the Z axis moves downwards looking for the home switch which of course is at the top of the Z-axis travel.

Later today I'll go over the Z config, comparing the Zenbot parameters to the Mach 3 parameters to see if I can clear it up, but if anybody has any ideas, I'm all ears. It sure feels good to finally be able to prove that I'm talking to the router finally and not running around in circles!

3
Mach3 under Vista / Re: Minimum PC requirements vs real life (Newbie)
« on: July 03, 2015, 12:45:03 PM »
OK, so what I'm hearing is that Mach 3 doesn't need much as far as resources go, but if it doesn't get what it needs, it fails horribly. Dedicating a CPU core or two to Mach 3 should get around any CPU bottleneck issue, and I assume it's ok at allocating enough RAM for itself; any other runtime events I should be considering?

Bruce

4
Mach3 under Vista / Re: Minimum PC requirements vs real life (Newbie)
« on: July 03, 2015, 11:14:14 AM »
Thanks Craig, I'm still waiting for them to find some space on the shop floor and choose an external controller. I'll definitely minimize the software on the box but hadn't considered an AV scan bringing it to a screaming halt! I might dedicate some cores to the production apps to avoid unwanted interference. Are you sure your problem was a resource issue and not a corrupt buffer or something like that?

Bruce

5
Mach3 under Vista / Re: Minimum PC requirements vs real life (Newbie)
« on: June 22, 2015, 09:33:27 AM »
Thanks Craig, I don't mind spending a little more of my client's money if it means better performance and less downtime, which I generally get from a mid-range workstation vs a desktop for an extra $100 or so (plus $150 for the GPU in this case). My client wins in employee satisfaction/productivity and lower IT consulting costs. My users won't mind tinkering with the software or the router, but as far as the PC goes, they just want it to work and stay out of the way, so although they're similar to the members of this group, they're not as tech savvy which needs to be accommodated.


6
Mach3 under Vista / Re: Minimum PC requirements vs real life (Newbie)
« on: June 22, 2015, 08:45:43 AM »
Thanks Gary, I'm not planning on putting the PC in a different room, I'm just looking for a little more freedom on setup. I'm not sure where the table is going to go yet, and am hoping to keep the cable off the floor.

7
Mach3 under Vista / Re: Minimum PC requirements vs real life (Newbie)
« on: June 18, 2015, 11:18:31 AM »
Looks like my last reply didn't get posted (user error I'm guessing!), sorry to leave everyone in the lurch.

Thanks again for all of your advice; things are starting to take shape.

We've purchased a 48"x48" Zenbot router and Gecko g540 control box which we're going to connect to an HP Z230 PC, i7 8GB RAM and NVIDIA Quadro k620 2GB GPU. I'm leaning towards the Ethernet Smoothstepper over the UC100 USB motion controller so the PC doesn't need to be close to the table.

Any thoughts or caveats I should consider?

Thanks,
Bruce

8
Mach3 under Vista / Re: Minimum PC requirements vs real life (Newbie)
« on: June 09, 2015, 10:02:04 AM »
Thanks All for the replies; much appreciated!

All things considered, I'd prefer a solution which can survive an upgrade or two, so I'm leaning towards Win7/64  with an external controller if possible. Win7/32  wouldn't be awful, as I can always reformat and reinstall when the time comes, but I'd still want to use an external controller to consolidate the startup pain.

As far as XP goes, my firewall is fine but end users are end users, so I'd really have to lock it down to avoid the malware they might ask for when nobody's looking. I want connectivity for program and OS updates, remote monitoring and admin. Isolating/locking down XP would also be pretty expensive for my client as they're paying me by the hour, so I'd need a pretty compelling reason to go that route.

Wes, I'm a big fan of the HP Z-series workstations and also more interested in time lost than money spent. I've got a few i-7's out there with 8GB RAM performing beautifully. I haven't had the need to add a discrete GPU to these PCs; can you recommend one, or should I wait and see how the integrated graphics hold up? The end products will be home décor accents (nic nacs. office desk stuff, coasters, etc) so no need for extreme tolerances; I'm sure AutoCAD would be huge overkill for their purposes if that helps.

I've also been impressed with HP's IPS monitors; would 1920x1080 be sufficient for creating these types of products?

Thanks again for all you help!


Bruce


9
Mach3 under Vista / Minimum PC requirements vs real life (Newbie)
« on: June 08, 2015, 05:34:15 PM »
Hello Everyone,

I'm an IT consultant with a client who has just purchased Mach 3 and has asked me to supply a suitable PC. I'm looking for a recommended configuration rather than a minimum,so what works best; 32-bit vs 64-bit Win7 (can't do XP as the PC will be exposed to the LAN), parallel port vs external motion controller, minimum RAM and onboard video memory, etc.

It will be a dedicated PC used for a variety of 2D and 3D applications. I took a spin through the FAQ and most of the hardware recommendations seem to be a few years old, so I'm hoping 64-bit is more viable now than it used to be but I'm definitely open to real community wisdom! I know I'll have a lot of other questions, but I'll wait until I get the base PC figured and run through a few manuals and tutorials so I can understand what you guys are talking about!

Pages: 1