Messages

1

General Mach Discussion / Re: Synchronized I/Os over Modbus (?)

« on: February 15, 2020, 04:44:13 AM »

firstly Mach4Hobby DOES have all six OB axes and yes they are step/direction

I didn't check personally, but here https://www.machsupport.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/Mach%20Version%20Differences_doc_a9.pdf it says 1 OB for hobby, 6 for industrial.

In any case, thanks for your support. I'll check further the macro approach, but I think the most straightforward way is indeed to plug in a few encoders and start from there.

Pietro

2

General Mach Discussion / Re: Synchronized I/Os over Modbus (?)

« on: February 13, 2020, 06:55:15 PM »

Hi Craig, thanks for the input.
I briefly checked what features Mach4 offers. The OB Axes you mentioned might be interesting but, as far as I understand, the limit is 6 (industrial version) and they will output step/dir signals, which I should then intepret somewhere and translate to device specific instructions (or?).
Is there a faster way than Modbus to communicate the axis position to an external PLC in Mach3/4 (without adding encoders)?

Pietro

3

General Mach Discussion / Synchronized I/Os over Modbus (?)

« on: February 13, 2020, 08:26:47 AM »

Hi all,

I am trying to wrap my head around the following problem:
I have multiple devices controlled over i2c that I want to operate according to the position of the 3 axes of a my cnc setup.

To visualize the problem one could imagine to have the following situation:
- 4 nozzles attached to a CNC setup
- the CNC moves the nozzles around over a plane
- according to the current position, each nozzle is turned either on or off

As I see it, one would need two sets of data:
1) toolpaths, fed to Mach3 as gcode
2) 2D matrix of 0s and 1s representing the raster "image" to be printed, loaded on a PLC
and
3) a way to communicate the position of the axes from Mach3 to the PLC and, consequently, operate the devices nozzles consistently

Given that all the assumptions above make sense, would Modbus be the best channel for transmitting such information?
Or do you know of any better way to reach a similar result?

Thanks,
Pietro

4

General Mach Discussion / Re: Mach3 home not working

« on: February 03, 2020, 09:08:30 AM »

Happy to hear that!

One note: if you open the xml file with any text editor, you can read in plain text all the configuration's details (including the pin assignments for each input/output)

Pietro

5

General Mach Discussion / G64 parameters?

« on: February 03, 2020, 09:06:15 AM »

So, it turned out that CV distance >0 and consecutive motions along the same axis (see code below) cause the machine to "thud" (at least in my case).
As for some routines I would like to still be able to set the CV dist >0, is there a way to set it through gcode?

i.e.:
...
G64 D0 // set dist = 0
G01 X100
G01 X200
G01 X300
...
G64 D1.5 // set dist = 1.5
...

Does anything similar exist in Mach3?

Pietro

6

General Mach Discussion / Re: How to smooth out motion when using M10/M11

« on: February 03, 2020, 04:54:43 AM »

So, I found the culprit:
nothing to do with M10/M11, was rather the combination of series of X moves and my CV settings (CV distance tolerance = 1.5). Got rid of the CV dist and everything's smooth now.

Tweaky, thanks again for your help!

Pietro

7

General Mach Discussion / Re: Mach3 home not working

« on: February 01, 2020, 07:34:47 AM »

I’m not at home at the moment so I can’t take screenshots but if I remember well:
- config menu
- ports and pins
- input tab

There you have to setup both port and pin number for all the switches. So for instance:
X++ port 2 pin 10
X - - port 2 pin 11
XHome port 2 pin 11 (same as X- -, if you only have one switch)

The pin numbering needs to reflect your hardware configuration

8

General Mach Discussion / Re: How to smooth out motion when using M10/M11

« on: February 01, 2020, 06:44:46 AM »

Thanks for trying!
What’s the reason for M03 and where do you add it? Only once at the beginning?

9

General Mach Discussion / Re: Mach3 Homing

« on: February 01, 2020, 05:29:31 AM »

With many motion controllers the command you are looking for is the following:

G28.1 A x (where A is the axis and x is coordinate where the motion slows down for homing)

To home slave axes togheter, tick the option in the general configuration tab ("Home slave with master axis")

10

General Mach Discussion / Re: Mach3 home not working

« on: February 01, 2020, 05:09:46 AM »

Hi Fred,
Sounds like the limit switch you are triggering is not configured as your home.
Have you checked if the port# and pin number in the configuration tab (XHome, YHome, ...) corresponds to the one you are hitting?

Pietro