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Topics - mcardoso

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1
Hello,

I'm curious if anyone has any knowledge about or examples of using LUA scripting to message an industrial device via Ethernet/IP via explicit messaging.

I've done some scripting of RS232/RS485 ASCII serial read/write via LUA, however I'm interested in querying data from a servo drive on a periodic basis. This servo drive can respond to Ethernet/IP explicit messages, but I am not sure where to start in LUA to generate these communications.

Thanks in advance for any information you can provide.

Mike

2
Mach4 General Discussion / Mach 4/LUA Ethernet Explicit Messaging
« on: April 06, 2021, 10:16:00 AM »
Hi All,

I'm just curious for the time being if this is possible. I would like to interface Mach 4 to a servo drive which can communicate over Ethernet/IP. The motion control signals will be Step and Direction coming from an Ethernet Smoothstepper, however I can also pull diagnostic information over Ethernet *if* there is a way to form and transmit a generic ethernet packet using LUA in Mach 4.

I did something similar a few years back using the serial port to pull diagnostics out of a servo drive and that actually worked great, now I'd like to repeat the endeavour using a different servo drive and Ethernet/IP.

So the question is: does anyone know of a LUA function or library which supports read/write over Ethernet?

Thanks much,

Mike
 

3
Mach4 General Discussion / Motion Planner Look Ahead for Nerds
« on: May 05, 2020, 09:26:17 AM »
Hi All,

I do industrial controls and realtime motion control at work. This differs drastically from the pre-planned and highly optimized motion planning that is used in the CNC world. I was wondering if anyone had any good "brain-leaking-out-of-the-ear" kind of reading on how CNC path planning and look ahead are accomplished. I'm particularly interested in understanding how/why increased lookahead changes the performance of CV motion control and how motion commands are buffered in PVT data for motion controllers.

Mach 3 had some great technical reading on how the motion planner actually functioned, especially when pulses were generated out the parallel port. I could have read that content for weeks! I don't need to limit myself to Mach 3/4 either if someone knows a good read.

Thanks!

Mike

4
Hi All,

I'm not actively trying to make this work this second, but I'm interested in learning about trying to interface Mach 4 to an industrial PLC. I had a lot of success implementing a serial communication function within LUA so that got me thinking about other methods.

I have an Allen Bradley ControlLogix PLC. It can talk on almost any industrial communication protocol, but the most common is Ethernet/IP. The quick and dirty way to get this to work would to be to add a Modbus TCP module to the PLC and connect that to the PC, however is Mach 4 capable of Ethernet messaging? Is this functionality built into LUA natively?

I'm thinking mostly about just generic I/O consumption from the inputs on the PLC, but perhaps more involved schemes could be created that would allow Mach 4 to instruct the PLC to do things (not coordinated to the motion planner). Ethernet is wicked fast so I think this would be pretty successful.

5
Mach4 General Discussion / T## Oddities
« on: April 28, 2020, 08:54:29 AM »
OK I have a weird one.

I keep a complete system image of my computer in case anything gets screwed up with Mach 4. This week we had a power outage right after I finished a program and had Mach 4 open. When I rebooted, Mach 4 was scrambled, had defaulted all the settings, and was running the wx4 screenset.

So I got out my trusty restore image and in 20 minutes everything was right back to where it was before the power outage. This is a BIOS level image so it gets Windows and everything. Big file, but it isn't quite a finicky as a Windows backup.

Mach 4 is running great with one exception (and it is possible this is entirely unrelated to doing that restore). When I execute an M06 Txx G43 Hxx from the MDI, the first thing it says is "Current tool in the spindle - nothing to do". If I run it again, then it works correctly, prompting me to change the tool and hit cycle start.

I found in the settings that the radio button is marked for "T# on line is next tool to use" or something like that. I think that it is designed for pre-load tool changers. I can choose the other option, but the APPLY button never becomes available. If I hit OK and reopen the control settings, the radio button is back to where it was before. It seems like I can change all the other settings in Mach except for this one.

Any idea what I can do to fix this?

Also, if NFS reads through here... Why is Mach 4 so unstable when it comes to shutting down incorrectly. I can't think of any other piece of software that I use that has such an adverse reaction. Heck, even if Mach 4 is closed and the computer is unplugged, it was mess stuff up. Can't this be protected against using save states in the software or some other method to automatically load a known good configuration?

6
Mach4 General Discussion / What did I do wrong?
« on: February 04, 2020, 11:50:35 AM »
Hi All,

I was in need of re-imaging my CNC PC with a fresh copy of Windows 10 due to some USB driver issues. Planning ahead to make this as painless as possible, I created an "installation" USB that had all the .exe files I needed as well as any documents that needed to be transferred.

To set up Mach 4 again, I downloaded a new .exe file and copied my profiles, screensets, and modules to the USB drive. I also downloaded new copies of the ESS plugins and Warp 9 SCU.

When the imaging was complete, I installed Mach 4, copied my profiles into the profiles folder, screensets into the screens folder, modules into the modules folder, and plugins into the plugins folder. When I opened Mach, I was disappointed to find that all of my settings under Control and Plugins -> Warp 9 ESS were completely blanked out. I thought the settings would be transferred with the profile.

Fortunately I made screenshots of all the configuration screens so it won't be much work to redo them, but what did I do wrong? How do you transfer the settings?

Thanks,

Mike

7
Mach4 General Discussion / Screw Mapping Support
« on: December 11, 2019, 09:44:57 AM »
Hi All,

Easy question here... Is screw mapping supported in Mach 4 Hobby?

Thanks,

Mike

8
Show"N"Tell ( What you have made with your CNC machine.) / Practice Part
« on: December 09, 2019, 02:36:41 PM »
2x4x2" PVC. 9 Tools 10 Operations. All tools preset in control.

Pictures Attached


9
Mach4 General Discussion / Servo Spindle Question
« on: November 22, 2019, 02:13:08 PM »
My CNC has a Step/Dir servo spindle motor which holds position of the spindle very tightly. I currently have it set up as OB1 and control it with M03/M04/M05.

I would like, in a small set of use cases, to be able to command incremental positions of this spindle (position control). Say use a G code command C1.0000 to command 1 revolution forward of the spindle.

What is the "proper" way to configure a spindle in Mach 4 such that I can use both M03/M04/M05 *and* C#.####?

Are there any gotchas when doing this?

10
So I have managed to crash Mach 4 to the point where I cannot even load my profile or restore the backups from the loader screen. I have an offline backup that I will be able to restore, however I do not have the changes to the Screen Load script, PLC script, or any other button scripts saved since this last backup.

Is there a way to access the Screen Script master file from the C:/Mach4Hobby directory so I can attempt to recover some of these changes?

I looked but could only find the modules I created.

Thanks :(

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