Topics

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Mach4 General Discussion / Having trouble with Probing

« on: July 06, 2019, 05:39:52 PM »

I finally took the time to setup my tool probe and probe tool, and have managed to get the M6 macro from newfangled's youtube video to work nicely to create my tool library. However my Probe tool is another story. It's wired in properly, and shows every hit when I test it, however all of the buttons in the probing section of mach 4 seem to act erratically for me. sometimes when I try to do a simple Z probe the Z axis goes Up instead of down, and not even by the amount I have it set to go down by.
Trying to probe an X/Y corner, using the default 0.25" setting will send the probe off along the Y axis until I force it to stop. Ive let it run nearly to the end of the axis, it never stopped itself to move along the X axis looking for a hit, however if I touch the probe tip and fake a hit, the axis stops moving and locks up mach 4.

I'm not sure what information ill need to provide, but ill start with this:
ESS v242 (started with 223 yesterday but updated trying to troubleshoot)
Mach 4 build 4162 (updated yesterday from a build from November 2018)
C82 BOB
all shielded cables
3 axis, dual steppers on X, single on Y and Z.
machine runs flawlessly besides this current probing issue I'm having.

I saw in another thread someone mentioned recompiling all the macros with the newest version, so I did another clean install and replaced all the macros in my profile with the new ones, with no change in results.

Google is leading me absolutely nowhere. I really hope someone here can point me in the right direction on where to start, or look for a solution!

2

Mach4 General Discussion / Hold button for enable?

« on: March 12, 2019, 06:18:28 PM »

I’m wondering if that’s an option with Mach 4? The way the haas controller let’s you use the start button as a hold to run button, pausing when you let go of it.
Basically I want to read an input from the BOB, that while is closed it runs, but pauses when the input goes open. Is that an option?

3

Mach4 General Discussion / Mach4 cutting feed rate on a 450,000 line gcode?

« on: January 30, 2017, 03:56:53 PM »

Cutting out a few aztec calendars with Mach4>ESS. As you'd expect the gcode is huge. the first time I ran it it cut 100% without any issues. the second time, at around 350,000 (60-65% of the way through) it stopped cutting at its set speed of 80ipm and started stuttering and moving the machine extremely jerkily, and mach4 was reading out that it was cutting out at 15-20 ipm, but still jogging at the normal jog speed of 120 when it lifted the spindle.
After pausing and restarting the program it continued on normally, but as the cut got closer to being complete I saw that the XY had been shifted by almost a quarter inch. thats fine, just started a fresh one without letting it finish (4 hour cut time)
Next run it started lagging and jittering again and reading the same low cut speed and normal jog speed at line 115,000 (approximately). I caught it almost right away this time, and when I paused it and resumed it, it ran through the rest of the code without fault. Everything stayed lined up this time as well.
I've been using this machine with Mach3 for over a year now without any issues like this. Just recently got the ESS and Mach4 to switch to a laptop from the old PC it came with.

My question is this:

Where should I start looking to find what is causing this? What information would I need to provide if anyone here has some insight?