Messages

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Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Mach 4 on a Millright Mega V: What do I need?

« on: April 22, 2020, 07:13:34 AM »

cool. thanks!

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Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Mach 4 on a Millright Mega V: What do I need?

« on: April 21, 2020, 05:10:41 PM »

Just curious - customize in what way?

The stuff I need to do seems to be supported by pretty much everything (even UGS, though not very well). My main goals are to have the following:

1) Reliable controller
2) Ability to restart a job partway through if I have to stop it for some reason
3) ability to do tool changes (manual at first, auto later maybe)
4) Has to handle homing/limit switches
5) has to support a touch probe
6) ability to control spindle speed through VFD
7) ability to turn coolant on/off
e-stop that shuts off the spindle along with the rest of it.

I may want to add a 4th axis at some point, but I'm mainly using this machine to cut fairly simple aluminum and plastic or delrin parts out of bar stock. It's primarily for work, where we're making parts for some specialized equipment we're building for in-house use, but it will also be used a little bit for some personal projects. So far I haven't come up with anything that I can imagine wanting to customize, but maybe that's because I don't know what the options are yet!

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Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Mach 4 on a Millright Mega V: What do I need?

« on: April 21, 2020, 03:33:22 PM »

Cool. Next time I can get into the office I'll check out the Millright control box, and I'll measure up the inside. looks like the Warp9 ESS is about the size of an arduino uno, and if I recall, there's room for a breakout board in there as well since I don't have the extra stepper driver and larger PSU that the 4-axis Mega V uses. I think I can pull the power for the ESS from the built-in power supply that the Arduino is currently using, since that would go away in the new setup. Seems like a reasonably inexpensive solution.

A few folks have suggested getting a Masso controller instead of using Mach 4. There's some appeal there, in that it doesn't need a computer to run and it looks like a pretty slick interface. What does Mach 4 have over the Masso that makes it better? Total cost (Mach4, ESS, BOB) winds up being about $150 cheaper than the Masso, but beside that, I mean.

Not having used either, I'm not really sure where the pitfalls are here.

Thanks!

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Mach4 General Discussion / Mach 4 on a Millright Mega V: What do I need?

« on: April 21, 2020, 07:14:36 AM »

I have a Millright Mega V. This machine uses an arduino and grbl, with UGS as the preferred gcode sender. I hate UGS - used it on my last Millright machine and it was just flaky as hell with lots of limitations. But on that old machine (an M3), the stepper drivers were part of the arduino and changing it out was a big hassle. On the Mega V, the stepper drivers are standalone units so I can swap out a controller (just bypassing the arduino entirely) without having to do as much work. I'm looking into switching over to Mach 4, but would like to know what I need in terms of controller hardware to interface with the existing stepper drivers and the computer.

This machine has dual Y-axis motors, which I believe share a driver, then there are separate drivers for X and Z for a total of 3. I also have a touch probe, and a 1.5kW Spindle/VFD I'll need to connect to it, and at some point I'd love to add an ATC spindle, and a way to automatically control a coolant mister, so whatever controller I get should have room to grow. Suggestions?

Thanks!